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 don’t think you could print it, it’s so bad.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗
I had a casting director once stop me in the middle of an audition and tell me to go wash my face in the bathroom because she felt my makeup was too distracting, but I wasn’t wearing any. It was mortifying. It felt like a power play and I was so young, I didn’t know what to do.
A headmaster said I was a complete washout and I would never be any good for anything.
Apart from stuff on social media, an ex-partner telling me I’m unlovable.
Called me the N-word.
An air traffic controller.
My closest friend at uni – I sometimes retreat from life in quite an extreme way, without word. Back then, I didn’t really understand what I was doing.
Watching the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin [about a gamer who died at 25 of a degenerative muscular disease]. I bawled.
Happy Day by Sarkodie. I’m half Ghanaian, and in Ghana funerals really are a celebration of life. You dance and sing; it’s just a completely different vibe to over here in the UK. I would hope at my funeral that everyone’s on their feet, having a good time.
I think that we dissolve into the soil and new things sprout from that.
Perfectionism that leads to procrastination.
Kevin Rowland, Edward Enninful, Richard Eyre, Lee Child, Siobhán McSweeney, Kate Humble
Search the directory for somebody in particular.