The Northern Irish actor James Nesbitt has called threatening graffiti naming him in Portrush "unnerving" and said it "saddens" him that someone would do it.
The TV and film star was speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme and said his keynote comments and appearance at an Ireland's Future event in Dublin had been misunderstood.
The graffiti said "1x King, 1x Crown, No Pope in Our Town James Nesbitt" and featured a crosshair symbol at the end and appeared on a wall in Portrush on Wednesday.
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"I got home very, very late and I woke up to quite a storm and it's a bit unnerving of course and it also saddens me a bit," James Nesbitt told Talkback.
"It really saddens me because this has been brought to Portrush, brought to my neighbours and to a community that I love, I really love Portrush and I'm sure, I hope it doesn't represent what the majority of people think there.
"What saddens me more in a way I suppose is that some people may have misunderstood my position and of course that's causing difficulties.
"What I would say is that in a democracy people are allowed to engage in a public conversation about the future and that's all I was attempting to do when I took part in the whole Ireland's Future debate.
"I was simply saying a conversation about what this island might look like in the future is worth having.
"I certainly don't promote any solution and don't support any outcome and simply it saddens me that people didn't fully analyse what I said or maybe just seen headlines and made their own judgement.
"I understand that that happens and I would appeal to them to say I went there as someone who went down there as someone who is a proud Protestant from the north of Ireland, I've never shied away from my Protestant culture, but it doesn't define me."
He went on to say that he had simply tried to engage in a debate and was disappointed at the reaction to that.
"Obviously that graffiti, whoever it was carried out by, suggests there's an element of sectarianism here and what I'm more interested in anything is that sectarianism is eradicated from the north," he said.
"But also if there is going to be change between the north and the south and our relationship with the rest of the British Isles, I very much was hoping to try and put forward the point that people particularly from my tradition would have their identity.
"That it's in no way threatened, that they have an equal voice, that they're part of a society that is progressive, inclusive and diverse.
"Unquestionably the majority of the people there (at the Ireland's Future event) are seeking a United Ireland - that doesn't mean I was.
"I was very much there, as I say, just saying I think there has to be a debate.
"In fact I'm trying to get the debate away from politicians, out of the Dail, trying to get it out of Whitehall and put into the church halls and the town halls and the Orange Halls so that everyone, the leaders of civic society in every department, begin to take more of an impact in what the change should be."
Police are treating the graffiti as a hate crime and are investigating.
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