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.
They tend to say it behind my back.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 August 2025 source ↗
“You can’t play Maxim de Winter with ginger hair.”
“I have it on very good authority he’s a complete cunt.”
Growing up as a gay boy in a small town, you get used to people saying bad things pretty quickly.
A reviewer once called me “artistically bankrupt”, and it doesn’t feel like reviews can get much worse than that.
A great education.
Anything by Dostoevsky. I tried!
Insular, creative and mechanically minded.
That there is time. I doggedly prioritise and pursue tasks, and the day seems to open out and everything does get done. Chill.
I suspect it hasn’t happened yet.
A criminal pathologist. Then I saw a show called Quincy ME and realised I just wanted to play one on TV.
Ed Harris, Bear Grylls, Juliet Stevenson, Sarah Hadland, Munroe Bergdorf, Bryn Terfel
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