James McAvoy has told how he was “absolutely shocked and dismayed” by the racial abuse his female co-stars suffered “on a daily basis” during his run of Cyrano de Bergerac in Glasgow and how he was delighted to leave the city.
The actor, 43, said that women in the cast suffered “sexually explicit and violent” taunts during their time in his home city. He said the experience was “horrible” and made him regret bringing the production to Scotland.
The play, adapted by Martin Crimp and directed by Jamie Lloyd, ran for nine sold-out performances at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in March before moving to Brooklyn, New York.
In an interview with GQ, McAvoy, who was brought up in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow, said: “The cast were amazing. It was brilliant. But I was really saddened, to be honest with you, because most of the women of colour in the cast got racially abused pretty much on a daily basis when we were there.
“I was just really saddened. I was absolutely shocked and dismayed and to use a Scottish word, scunnered. We were delighted to get to Brooklyn and leave Glasgow. It was horrible.”
McAvoy told the magazine that he had debated whether or not to tell the story because he knows how it could go down at home.
He added: “The narrative that Scottish people and the Scottish media want to hear when one of us has gone away and done all right: they like you to be back at home and go, ‘It’s rare. It’s fantastic. I’m chuffed to be here and there’s no crowd like a Scottish crowd’.
“But I was going on stage every night going, ‘I don’t want us to be here. I brought this cast here and I don’t want to be here’.”
McAvoy took the lead role in the play, written in 1897 by the French dramatist Edmond Rostand. It has undergone a modern remake with duels turned into rap battles, and a chorus featuring beatboxers.
The show and McAvoy’s performance won rave reviews from critics. It completed a six-week run in London’s West End before going to Glasgow.
A spokesperson for Theatre Royal Glasgow said: “Everyone at Theatre Royal was extremely upset by these incidents which happened elsewhere in Glasgow city centre. Diversity and inclusion remain a priority for us, and we offered appropriate support to the company at the time.”
On a daily basis? That’s unbelievable. Why is the racism so bad in Glasgow?
People go on about England but the home nations are racist as fuck
I’m a Scot and I quite like Scotland on the whole but damn if there isn’t a lot of knuckle-dragging shitstains living in the place.
Scots online would have you believe its a post racial society but I think white Scots are quite blind to what goes on there
For anybody wanting statistical evidence of racial harassment in Scotland, rather than drawing big conclusions from one person’s anecdotal evidence –
Below breaks the data down by police divisions (NB the data is not from police recorded crime, which would only capture a small proportion of incidents, it is from interviews with random samples of the population) – https://scotland.shinyapps.io/sg-scottish-crime-justice-survey/
Having lived in Scotland pretty much my whole life this is sad strange enough Glasgow seems to be a hot spot i’ve seen my fair share of racism from arseholes in school to mostly elderly people giving me long stares in public i hope racism dies out for good in our lifetime
I’m not particularly surprised/shocked by this because you still see people getting visually annoyed/upset when they hear an English accent.
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James McAvoy has told how he was “absolutely shocked and dismayed” by the racial abuse his female co-stars suffered “on a daily basis” during his run of Cyrano de Bergerac in Glasgow and how he was delighted to leave the city.
The actor, 43, said that women in the cast suffered “sexually explicit and violent” taunts during their time in his home city. He said the experience was “horrible” and made him regret bringing the production to Scotland.
The play, adapted by Martin Crimp and directed by Jamie Lloyd, ran for nine sold-out performances at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in March before moving to Brooklyn, New York.
In an interview with GQ, McAvoy, who was brought up in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow, said: “The cast were amazing. It was brilliant. But I was really saddened, to be honest with you, because most of the women of colour in the cast got racially abused pretty much on a daily basis when we were there.
“I was just really saddened. I was absolutely shocked and dismayed and to use a Scottish word, scunnered. We were delighted to get to Brooklyn and leave Glasgow. It was horrible.”
McAvoy told the magazine that he had debated whether or not to tell the story because he knows how it could go down at home.
He added: “The narrative that Scottish people and the Scottish media want to hear when one of us has gone away and done all right: they like you to be back at home and go, ‘It’s rare. It’s fantastic. I’m chuffed to be here and there’s no crowd like a Scottish crowd’.
“But I was going on stage every night going, ‘I don’t want us to be here. I brought this cast here and I don’t want to be here’.”
McAvoy took the lead role in the play, written in 1897 by the French dramatist Edmond Rostand. It has undergone a modern remake with duels turned into rap battles, and a chorus featuring beatboxers.
The show and McAvoy’s performance won rave reviews from critics. It completed a six-week run in London’s West End before going to Glasgow.
A spokesperson for Theatre Royal Glasgow said: “Everyone at Theatre Royal was extremely upset by these incidents which happened elsewhere in Glasgow city centre. Diversity and inclusion remain a priority for us, and we offered appropriate support to the company at the time.”
On a daily basis? That’s unbelievable. Why is the racism so bad in Glasgow?
People go on about England but the home nations are racist as fuck
I’m a Scot and I quite like Scotland on the whole but damn if there isn’t a lot of knuckle-dragging shitstains living in the place.
Scots online would have you believe its a post racial society but I think white Scots are quite blind to what goes on there
For anybody wanting statistical evidence of racial harassment in Scotland, rather than drawing big conclusions from one person’s anecdotal evidence –
https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-crime-and-justice-survey/
Below breaks the data down by police divisions (NB the data is not from police recorded crime, which would only capture a small proportion of incidents, it is from interviews with random samples of the population) – https://scotland.shinyapps.io/sg-scottish-crime-justice-survey/
England’s version is here, for anybody that wants to delve/compare – https://www.crimesurvey.co.uk/en/SurveyResults.html
Having lived in Scotland pretty much my whole life this is sad strange enough Glasgow seems to be a hot spot i’ve seen my fair share of racism from arseholes in school to mostly elderly people giving me long stares in public i hope racism dies out for good in our lifetime
I’m not particularly surprised/shocked by this because you still see people getting visually annoyed/upset when they hear an English accent.