When interviewing Idi Amin of Uganda in 1975, he shouted: “We have ways of dealing with people like you.”
How close have you come to death?
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
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.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 209 →I fell asleep in a room that had an oil heater and it filled with carbon monoxide and, if it hadn’t been for my husband, Terry, I would have died.
Mike Skinner
English rapper
We used to have one of those gat guns that shot pellets. My friend pretty much had the thing at point-blank range to my temple. It popped out and completed its trajectory about a millimetre from my head.
When my first husband died, because it felt like my life was over, and it was challenging to keep in life at the time.
More from Paapa Essiedu
View profile →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.
I find it difficult to sit still.
In order to raise money to pay for myself to go to the National Youth Theatre, I performed a medley of my drama school speeches and some songs for my entire school. Considering I can’t sing, this was terrible. I did U Remind Me by Usher and Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s. They paid £2 each – basically, to laugh at me.
To find as many moments to laugh as possible.
I would really love to know my parents as an adult. I lost my dad when I was 14 and my mum when I was 20.
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- What happens when we die? 51 answers
- How would you like to die? 43 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 42 answers
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Adeel Akhtar, Adrian Edmondson, Aidan Gillen, Andy Serkis, Anna Friel, Bertie Carvel
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