James McAvoy has said he was 'delighted' to leave Glasgow after a recent theatre stint due to the amount of racial abuse his female castmates received.
The Drumchapel-born actor brought his West End play 'Cyrano de Bergerac' to the Theatre Royal in March but described the experience as 'horrible'.
Speaking to GQ magazine, the Hollywood actor said he was 'shocked and saddened' by the behaviour of locals during his time in city with 'sexually explicit and violent' abuse directed at the women of colour on a 'daily basis'.
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He explained: "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 [where the play was to move to next], and leave Glasgow. It was horrible."
The 43-year-old said that the abuse left him desperate to leave the city.
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.”
In the interview, James also responded to a tweet about someone's aunt bumping into him in M&S on Byres Road.
The tweet, which has attracted 80,000 likes, reads: "Just been reminded of the time my aunty and her pal met James McAvoy in M&S on Byres Road and she went ‘oh god I bet this is your nightmare, two middle aged mums following you around the supermarket’ and he looked her dead in the eye and said ‘actually… it’s my biggest fantasy'."
Laughing, he told GQ: “It’s definitely not my ultimate fantasy. I do not remember this.” He doesn’t dispute that it happened, though. “I’m glad that somebody actually hears the s*** I say to them, because usually people always look glazed when I say things to ’em that I think is witty.”
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."
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