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.
Someone once saw me in a play and said that I was disgusting.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 June 2026 source ↗
A radio presenter said I had yellow teeth – to my face. When I was 45, a manager in LA said I was too old to work in Hollywood; and then she rang my agent and said, “Can you tell your client never to wear that perfume again because it made me feel sick.”
When I was growing up, my mother would accuse me of showing off. That’s the most shaming, humbling, horrible thing. What was I doing? Showing off!
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.
“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.
Any time I’m in rehearsals.
If I needed less sleep.
My mother, because when I’m stressed, I can be really horrible to her.
I’ve a phobia of statues. It does go back to childhood. My parents brought me to look at a French church late at night. Since then I can’t deal with them.
A wedding ring.
Becoming invisible.
Felicity Jones, Craig Charles, Graydon Carter, Bryn Terfel, Omid Djalili, Bruno Tonioli
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