The question
What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I was opening in a play in my 20s, and my agent came on opening night, brought flowers, took me out to dinner and then told me she was no longer going to be representing me.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 April 2023 source ↗
I’m not interested.
“Oh, he’s all about money.” I’ve never charged anyone in all the years I’ve been doing one-to-one work. That’s my gift to the world.
“I could never love you like that.”
The second agent I had said: “The thing is, you look like something but then you open your mouth.” So I got myself a sketch show and left, and she lost out.
I was doing a photoshoot right after an awards show and I was talking about someone whose makeup I really didn’t like. I said: “She’s gorgeous, I don’t understand how a makeup artist could encourage that?” And the makeup artist on the photoshoot said: “I did her makeup.”
I was a ticket taker at the Universal Amphitheatre, an outdoor music venue. I saw everybody – Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, the Eagles, Elton. But, after that, we had to clean the women’s restrooms and that was horrible. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of vomiting, a lot of very messy bathrooms.
Anything and everything.
Having breast cancer.
I really admire Bonnie Raitt. She is a singer songwriter who has been doing what she has been doing for so many years and she recently won the song of the year Grammy for Just Like That. I loved the validation that creativity never stops, you can keep doing the things that you love.
Losing my memory. My mom had Alzheimer’s disease, and I never ever want to have that decline.
Rose Ayling-Ellis, Olly Alexander, Paapa Essiedu, Craig Charles, Felicity Jones, Omid Djalili
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