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.
An English teacher said, “You’ll never make anything of yourself.”
The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 September 2025 source ↗
Someone once saw me in a play and said that I was disgusting.
“I would love to go on a date with you, but I’d be too embarrassed.”
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 can't see your children for two weeks." (When I was going through my divorce.)
Trusting someone and being let down.
It was reading out loud, but no longer. (I am dyslexic.) I was encouraged by my husband to do a speech for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, which helped me gain my confidence, and the fear disappeared.
Honest, empathetic, daring.
The children. As a mother you are constantly worrying whether you’ve done the right thing.
In a different sense, I’ve helped to try to resuscitate a dead man.
Lack of empathy.
Graydon Carter, Belinda Carlisle, Zack Polanski, Toby Stephens, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Marcus Mumford
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