Anything, because I’m a worrier. Also, if I’m working on a really exciting project, I can be awake like an excited child looking forward to going on holiday.
What keeps you awake at night?
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A long-running fixed question in The Guardian's weekly Q&A questionnaire.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
A really bad habit of eating sweets before I go to sleep.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 196 →
Ralf Little
English actor, writer, former semi-professional footballer
Worry about work: it’s a precarious business being an actor.
Reece Shearsmith
British actor, comedian and writer
Sometimes the overwhelming realisation that I will one day die; but mostly that ShortList man from the tube throwing stones at my window.
My kids, global boiling, everything.
More from Paapa Essiedu
View profile →To find as many moments to laugh as possible.
I was a happy kid. I had quite a small life: I grew up in Walthamstow and didn’t really leave east London. I didn’t go to the South Bank for the first time until I was 18 years old.
I find it difficult to sit still.
Called me the N-word.
After losing my mum still managing to finish drama school, because that was really difficult. I lost her in the first year.
In 2016, the moment my agent rang me to tell me I’d got the part of Hamlet for the RSC. While I was on the phone, I looked to my left and turned to the right, and a bus whizzed by and the wing mirror was so close to me that it knocked my hat off.
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