Alan Cumming on ‘The Traitors’ Success, ‘Anniversary Party’ Sequel

It may take a village to make a reality show, but for The Traitors, the undisputed MVP is Alan Cumming. With his tongue-in-cheek portrayal of himself, outlandish costumes (a wedding veil and a hair band adorned with chess pieces are among his more subtle accessories) and unabating love of drama, the Scottish multihyphenate has subverted the norms of TV host. Elevating a simple concept — party game Mafia but with reality stars — he’s also helped make the competition a surprise breakout for Peacock. Viewership spiked 67 percent during the recent third season, and it netted three Emmys in 2024 — breaking RuPaul’s long reign in the host and best competition series categories. Zooming in from Scotland in May, Cumming says he’s happy the show is doing so well. He’s even happier that it affords him the opportunity to play around. “I’ve always just given things a go,” he says. “What’s the worst thing that can happen? I get fired?”

You’ve done something rather unprecedented in this genre in that you’re hosting, but you’re not really yourself. If this Alan Cumming is a character, does he have a backstory?

This is going to sound preposterous, but it’s sort of like a Brechtian exercise. I am playing a character, but I am reminding the audience all the time that I’m playing that character. So, I don’t think about it the same way. It’s alienation. It’s not a Stanislavski thing where I have a backstory. I only have a present story. You probably didn’t think you’d be getting into Brechtian theory talking about hosting a competition …

I was going to liken it to autofiction.

Right? I’m called Alan Cumming and I look like Alan Cumming, but that’s where it ends. It’s sort of hilarious to me because I’m asking people to really believe that I live in that castle, wear those things and even sound like that. I’m sort of subverting the form of hosting. It’s exciting, and I stumbled upon it. There was no real precedent.

You don’t live in a castle, but you grew up on the grounds of a castle — right?

My father was the head forester of a very large estate in Angus. The estate was still working as an estate, but they’d blown up the castle because of death taxes. There should have been some Downton Abbey-esque house there. And The Traitors is sort of the version of the house that was not there when I grew up. This is like architectural therapy.

Didn’t you film an architecture show?

It was called Alan Cumming’s Paradise Homes. I would go to these people’s houses and just ask them about why these were their dream homes. It was supposed to be about homes on islands. At the last minute, they said, “Oh, we haven’t been able to cast all the homes on islands.” That was the whole point of the show! Then they said, “Well, some of them are near water.” What?! I called the show Not Islands as a protest, but I ended up really enjoying it. I got to snoop around people’s houses.

Some of your getups on The Traitors, especially this past season, are wild. Do you and your costume designer feel that you now have to constantly one-up yourselves?

We’ve created a monster, and it’s quite daunting in that respect. We talk a lot about how far can we take it. There are times when I’m basically wearing a suit and a hat and other times where I’m wearing insane headdresses. I’m a 60-year-old man and I’m being this fashion clotheshorse, an androgynous fusion of all these feminine, crazy outfits. It’s a healthy thing to put that message out into the world, especially in the times we’re living in with such terrible persecution of people who are different, who are fluid or who are trans. I’m basically being a nonbinary person a lot of the time. I hope that helps the conversation in America right now.

As someone who doesn’t watch reality TV, what is your take on the contestants from Survivor and Big Brother who behave as though they come into the show with an edge on the gameplay?

I am always a bit confused by them, but I really enjoy the arrogance of the people who come from those types of shows. They think they’re going to be better at The Traitors than anybody else. There are certainly qualities to their strategies, but another strategy is that maybe you lay low, shut up and not beat your chest so much. That’s what I find so interesting about the people who are sent home first.

What about them?

I drunkenly agreed to go on [season two castmember] Johnny Bananas’ podcast, and he was like, “Why, Alan? Why do you think I was put out first?” I said, “Well, I think because you’re kind of annoying and abrasive and somebody’s got to go first.” The three people who’ve all gone first have always kind of fit into that category.

I associate you with New York. But between The Traitors and your new gig as artistic director of Scotland’s Pitlochry Festival Theatre, you’re spending a lot of time in your homeland, aren’t you?

I might not be back to America for a while. I’m waiting for the Avengers [shoot days], but I go on holiday next week and then I go do The Traitors. Work takes me here, and I have a home here, so it’s worked out pretty well. And, obviously, other circumstances have arisen that make it even more preferable than before to be outside of America.

Would it be accurate to say the career choices you’ve made are informed by a potential for fun? Was that ever not the case? And, if so, how did you turn it around?

Now that I’m in my evolved, after-much-therapy life, I know the danger of staying in a place that is not healthy for you. That’s probably why I look like I’m having such fun all the time. I am. But I have done things that have been awful. But if you’re on a film you thought was going to be great, but you’re having a terrible experience, what can you do? You’ve got to finish it. When I look back, I’ve had a few films that I had the most miserable experience on and they turned out to be really good films — and, likewise, terrible films that I had a blast making. And I’d much rather have a blast than have a good film. Success is nice. The Traitors is huge, and I’m happy to be in it. But the best thing about it is that it’s fun.

I’m not calling this film bad, because I love it, but Josie and the Pussycats was very poorly received when it premiered and by most accounts it was a fun set. I only bring it up because your co-star Parker Posey recently told me she’s never even seen it.

Really? I know Parker really well. I remember that she wasn’t at the premiere, so it’s possible. There are some films I’ve been in and never seen, but not the big ones. She must know that it’s culty now. Over its life, it found a really passionate audience. It was just on the Criterion Channel … as part of a collection of Parker’s films! It was ahead of its time. It’s like that saying: If you live long enough, you’ll see your enemies floating down the river. (Laughs.) That’s probably a bad analogy. But if you live long enough, people will watch the films nobody saw when they first came out. Same thing.

Next year is the 25th anniversary of The Anniversary Party, this huge ensemble piece that you wrote and directed with Jennifer Jason Leigh. Any plans to acknowledge that?

We actually started to work on a sequel and just got too busy. We had a story. It was 2019 that Jennifer came and stayed with me and we worked on it. There’s a lovely thing about getting older. Projects come back into your life and you engage with them again. There was X-Men, and now I’m going to do The Avengers. This sitcom that I wrote with my friend in the ’90s [The High Life] is going to tour as a musical next year. A sequel to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is in the cards. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we go back to The Anniversary Party and those characters and see where they are now.

But could you get everyone? Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. Reilly, Kevin Kline, Parker, Jennifer Beals — it’s a pretty large group.

And we kind of based all the characters on versions of the real people. Look at Gwyneth now. She’s this mogul selling candles and all that. I think that’s really hilarious. She plays a more starlet-y version of herself in the film, but, nonetheless, she was a young actress who now has a completely different life. We talked to Gwyneth and the key players. I think they would come back and make space to do it again.

I have to ask you about your return to Marvel, playing your X-Men character Nightcrawler after 22 years. Was that a call you were expecting?

No! There was already a younger version of my character played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. That’s happened to me several times, where there’s a remake of something I’ve done with someone younger. It’s kind of galling. But when I was asked to meet the Marvel people, nobody knew whether it was indeed Nightcrawler or some other part. It’s interesting because that was one of the films that was not a great experience at all to make — and ended up being a really great film.

X2?

I had a miserable time making it. All of us did. It was not nice. [Marvel] was very conscious of that. It’s not finished yet, but it feels healing to go back to something that wasn’t the greatest experience and enjoy yourself. When I wrote my book, Baggage, I realized that after X-Men, I stopped doing those kinds of bigger, blockbuster-type films. I didn’t do anything like that for years. I purposely went away from that big machine because I didn’t want to be an unhappy cog. Going back to a different atmosphere, it’s really nice.

This story appeared in the June 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.