{"id":2232,"date":"2026-11-02T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/?p=2232"},"modified":"2026-11-02T12:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:01:00","slug":"war-star-phoebe-fox-recalls-brutalising-experience-at-rada-and-slams-late-director-as-a-bully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/?p=2232","title":{"rendered":"\u2018War\u2019 Star Phoebe Fox Recalls \u2018Brutalising\u2019 Experience at Rada and Slams Late Director as a \u2018Bully\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actor Phoebe Fox, currently starring in the acclaimed Sky Atlantic and HBO legal drama War<\/em>, has opened up about the deeply negative experiences she endured while training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), describing her time at the prestigious London institution as a "brutalising experience."<\/p>\n

Fox, 39, studied at Rada before launching a successful professional acting career across television, film, and theatre. Her notable screen credits include appearances in Black Mirror<\/em> and The Great<\/em>, alongside acclaimed stage work such as her standout performance in the 2014 West End revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s A View from the Bridge<\/em>. However, reflecting on her foundational years in a recent interview with The Times<\/em>, Fox revealed that the historic drama school relied on psychological tear-down methods that crossed the line into active mistreatment.<\/p>\n

"The teachers really break you down, which is necessary to a point to get you out of your comfort zone," Fox said. "And it\u2019s highly competitive \u2014 other students weren\u2019t always nice."<\/p>\n

During her training, Fox was singled out by a prominent mentor whom she described without hesitation as a tyrant. She directed her criticism at the late stage director Bill Gaskill, an associate member of Rada who passed away in 2016. Gaskill held a legendary status within British theatrical circles, best remembered for his tenure as the artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre between 1965 and 1972, during which he was credited with bringing many seminal works by playwright Bertolt Brecht to the British stage for the first time. <\/p>\n

Despite his institutional legacy, Fox painted a starkly different picture of the director behind closed doors, recalling a pattern of psychological undermining that left a lasting impact on her when she was just a teenager.<\/p>\n

"He was a tyrant and probably losing his marbles a bit," Fox said. "I\u2019m sure Rada would say he was a very lauded director, but the truth is he was a f***ing arsehole and a bully."<\/p>\n

Recalling a specific incident from when she was only 19 years old, Fox detailed how Gaskill attacked her physical appearance and undermined her professional potential. "He told me I looked like a dwarf on stage and would never be a film actress," she said. "Then, like a classic bully, when we opened a show he took me aside and told me I was the only one who really understood it." Fox admitted that she was entirely "shocked" at the time to receive such harsh and contradictory feedback from someone entrusted with her professional development.<\/p>\n

\"War<\/figure>\n

In response to the claims, The Independent<\/em> contacted Rada for comment. A spokesperson for the drama academy told The Times<\/em> that the institution was "sorry" to hear about Fox\u2019s distressing experience. "We believe training should always prioritise care and respect and we welcome the opportunity to hear more from graduates if they wish to contact us," the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

Despite the difficult environment, Fox\u2019s time at Rada was not without personal milestones. It was during her studies at the academy that she first met her future husband, actor Kyle Soller, who is widely known for his role in the Star Wars<\/em> spin-off series Andor<\/em> and was enrolled two years ahead of Fox at the school.<\/p>\n

Today, Fox is receiving widespread attention for her leading role in War<\/em>, a high-stakes legal drama airing on Sky Atlantic in the United Kingdom and streaming via HBO Max in the United States. In the series, Fox stars as Serena Byrne, a formidable partner at a high-profile legal firm, showcasing the talents that her early mentors failed to extinguish.<\/p>\n

Fox is far from the first high-profile British actor to speak publicly about toxic training cultures and severe bullying within top-tier UK drama schools. Her revelations echo similar criticisms previously leveled against Rada by This Country<\/em> star Daisy May Cooper. <\/p>\n

In a candid interview with The Evening Standard<\/em> in 2023, Cooper detailed her own traumatic experiences at the institution, stating that she had "not known bullying like what I experienced in that school, in any f***ing workplace."<\/p>\n

"I don\u2019t think that I realised that it was real bullying until I started talking to other people from my year, or other people that went\u2026 That [kind of] bullying does not need to exist anywhere," Cooper told the publication at the time. She rejected the long-standing excuse that harsh treatment is a necessary tool for artistic transformation, adding: "It\u2019s not like, \u2018We\u2019re trying to shape you into the best people that you could be, so we\u2019ve got to be mean.\u2019 That\u2019s not going to get the best out of people, that\u2019s going to leave [them] with scars that they can never fix."<\/p>\n

Following Cooper\u2019s remarks, a representative for Rada issued a formal apology published in the Standard<\/em>, distancing the academy’s current administration from past practices. "We are very sorry to hear about Daisy May Cooper\u2019s experiences at Rada when she trained here, and would not tolerate the practices she describes in our present teaching environment," the school’s statement read. <\/p>\n

The spokesperson emphasized that student welfare remains a top priority for the academy today, noting that their dedicated wellbeing team works closely with students while they explore challenging dramatic material, both during and after classes. The institution also reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining a strict zero-tolerance policy regarding discrimination, harassment, and bullying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actor Phoebe Fox, currently starring in the acclaimed Sky Atlantic and HBO legal drama War, has opened up about the deeply negative experiences she endured while training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), describing her time at the prestigious London institution as a "brutalising experience." Fox, 39, studied at Rada before launching a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[3084,3086,157,2851,159,383,158,919,22,3083,3085,613,2379,728],"class_list":["post-2232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-parenting-and-gossips","tag-brutalising","tag-bully","tag-celebrity","tag-director","tag-entertainment","tag-experience","tag-gossip","tag-late","tag-parenting","tag-phoebe","tag-rada","tag-recalls","tag-slams","tag-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babydollliz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}