Alan Cumming<\/a> was bored. It was the late Nineties, he was making a film called Buddy with Rene Russo, and Hollywood<\/a> wasn\u2019t all it was cracked up to be. \u201cI was young and wanted to have fun,\u201d the Scottish actor recalls, \u201cbut I felt like I was always missing the party.\u201d Russo tried to shake him from his torpor: \u201cYou\u2019re making studio movies, you\u2019re in Hollywood \u2013 Alan, this is as good as it gets,\u201d she told him. How depressing, he thought.<\/p>\n Returning to London for some time off \u2013 \u201ca really debauched few months\u201d that he later wrote about in the novel Tommy\u2019s Tale \u2013 Cumming was cast by Stanley Kubrick<\/a> in Eyes Wide Shut <\/a>after a long audition process. The role was minuscule \u2013 one scene as a flirty hotel receptionist \u2013 but Kubrick spent a week filming it, demanding over 60 takes. Most actors would have despaired. Cumming didn\u2019t. Instead, he was \u201ctotally reinvigorated\u201d by Kubrick\u2019s famed fastidiousness, rediscovering exactly what had first drawn him to acting. \u201cEvery detail was so exciting,\u201d he remembers. There was mutual respect; Cumming believes his attitude of \u201cI won\u2019t be taking any s***, Mr Kubrick\u201d helped land him the part. \u201cWe just had a lovely time together.\u201d<\/p>\n The period before that had really put him through the wringer, Cumming tells me. When he headed to LA to shoot Buddy and the now-cult comedy Romy and Michele\u2019s High School Reunion<\/a>, it was off the back of his jackbooted, licentious performance as the sexually ambiguous Emcee in Sam Mendes<\/a>\u2019 gritty production of Cabaret, and of playing Hamlet at the Donmar (also under Mendes). \u201cI nearly had a breakdown,\u201d the 60-year-old says. \u201cThey were huge successes\u201d \u2013 but also a \u201cdisaster\u201d for him mentally. Not helping was Cumming\u2019s breakup with Saffron Burrows, his co-star in the 1995 film Circle of Friends. \u201cI was really fragile,\u201d he says. So when he returned from Hollywood, \u201ctheatre seemed too daunting. I was thinking, \u2018What will I do? Maybe I\u2019ll start writing a book.\u2019 I felt floaty, and then I did the thing with Stanley…\u201d<\/p>\n Cumming is talking to me on Zoom from New York, where he\u2019s taking a break from shooting Tip Toe, a new Russell T Davies<\/a> series set in Manchester. He is wearing a striped top like something from a mime\u2019s wardrobe, stroking his moustache throughout our conversation as if to check it\u2019s still there. His grey hair swooshes back theatrically; circular glasses adorn his elfin features. A natural storyteller, he leans into anecdotes with vaudevillian relish. <\/p>\n I tell him GoldenEye<\/a> was the first time I came across his work. In the 1995 Bond film, Pierce Brosnan<\/a>\u2019s first as 007, he played the villainous Boris Grishenko, a twitchy, pen-twiddling computer geek spouting lines like \u201cI am invincible!\u201d Cumming remembers struggling to spin the pen that was so integral to the plot. \u201cSo then my friend Jason Isaacs<\/a>, who used to do kids\u2019 magic parties, showed me how to do it,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI got it and nailed it, and then they gave me the James Bond<\/a> Parker pen. I had just been practising with a Biro, so I suddenly was f***ed.\u201d <\/p>\n Cumming has materialised on my laptop screen to discuss his inaugural season as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, in the tiny Perthshire town 10 miles from where he was born. The venue celebrates its 75th anniversary next year, and Cumming\u2019s 2026 lineup, finalised this week, is bold and eclectic \u2013 a programme that reflects his own indefatigable energy. \u201cMy personality and my spirit are at the centre of it,\u201d says Cumming. \u201cSo what I\u2019ve done is make a season around people who I have worked with and love or admire, or all three.\u201d The aim, he adds, is to \u201chave the theatre full of people who never come to the theatre. A something-for-everyone vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Stealing the scene: Cumming\u2019s t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate with Tom Cruise in \u2018Eyes Wide Shut\u2019 (Warner Bros)<\/p>\n Certainly, he delivers on the latter. From the Tony Award-winning musical Once \u2013 with its original Broadway creative team \u2013 to Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell\u2019s new romcom, Inexperience, and I Can Die Too, a Jean Cocteau-inspired concert play co-written by Cumming, Sally George and Frances Ruffelle, it\u2019s a vibrant programme that \u201cdoesn\u2019t condescend to people in terms of their taste\u201d. Intriguing, too, will be Maureen Beattie playing King Lear, and Cumming reuniting with Shirley Henderson \u2013 they first appeared together in the 1987 TV series Shadow of the Stone \u2013 for A History of Paper, a poignant love story by Oliver Emanuel, posthumously presented with songs by Gareth Williams. Elsewhere, Cumming directs I\u2019ll Be Seeing You, with Simon Russell Beale as a playwright writing about Liberace. \u201cIt\u2019s brilliantly meta,\u201d says Cumming, who will also star next November as Henry Higgins in a new production of My Fair Lady.<\/p>\n It\u2019s happening, it\u2019s here, it\u2019s now. There is authoritarianism in America and I\u2019m terrified<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Before all that, though, Ian McKellen, Graham Norton and Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin will descend on Pitlochry in January for what Cumming describes as \u201ca weekend of queer joy\u201d. Most notable will be McKellen starring in a new one-man play, Equinox, as well as Cumming somehow finding the time to interview Norton on stage and then lead a cast of six in Me and the Girls, a stage adaptation by Neil Bartlett of No\u00ebl Coward\u2019s 1964 short story. \u201cNot much normally happens in January in the theatre,\u201d says Cumming, \u201cso I thought, let\u2019s do a mini-festival then, and let\u2019s do one about queer people\u201d. <\/p>\n The festival, he continues, will also be \u201ca form of support and solidarity, at a time when LGBT people need it\u201d, with hate crimes on the rise, hostile comment pieces in the British press, and the Trump administration issuing a flurry of anti-trans executive orders. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Emcee glamour: Cumming as the delectable Master of Ceremonies with Jane Horrocks as Sally Bowles in \u2018Cabaret\u2019 (Mubi)<\/p>\n Tip Toe is all about this, says Cumming, who is bisexual. \u201cIt\u2019s about the rage, and the radicalisation of certain people about various subjects, including anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-immigrants. All these things that are used by people as a smokescreen to gain power, to take attention away from the problems of our standard of living and our lack of a moral centre.\u201d It\u2019s a tactic, he believes, that is used \u201cwhen you don\u2019t really have any policies. Let\u2019s just blame people who are already marginalised. It\u2019s a slippery slope. Next, they\u2019ll be coming for the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re on the cusp of \u201csomething really horrible\u201d, he insists. \u201cAnd in America, of course, it\u2019s already started. Trans people have no actual rights. They don\u2019t exist, according to the Supreme Court. All these forms of decency, and caring, and support for you if you are different, have been ripped away in Trump\u2019s new regime.\u201d He references the case currently underway in the US \u2013 10 years after the Supreme Court gave same-sex couples equal marriage rights \u2013 in which the justices are being asked to rule that those rights can be ignored on religious grounds. <\/p>\n \u201cWe know where this is going,\u201d he says. \u201cSoldiers in the streets, taking citizens away, people being \u2018disappeared\u2019. It\u2019s happening, it\u2019s here, it\u2019s now. It\u2019s not imminent. There is authoritarianism, and a government that has no concern for a vast majority of its citizens and will do anything it can to stay in power… I\u2019m terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Cult classic: Janeane Garofalo and Cumming in \u2018Romy and Michele\u2019s High School Reunion\u2019 (1997) (Touchstone Pictures)<\/p>\n In July, Cumming guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live<\/a>!, and in his opening monologue, he tells me, he \u201cdid a big rant about trans rights<\/a>… People around me were like, \u2019You\u2019re going to be deported.\u2019\u201d He worried about it the next time he left the country. Cumming has been a US citizen since 2008, and notes how frightened people are at the moment. \u201cThey\u2019re scared for their physical safety. They\u2019re scared when they go to the airport that they\u2019re going to be held… I mean, those are real fears and I feel them too. But luckily, I have another home, I have another passport, another country, and another life there.\u201d<\/p>\n That safe haven, Cumming believes, is also under threat, and we should be \u201cstanding up to the rhetoric of Farage, and reminding people that this refugee problem is the way it is because we don\u2019t have a deal with Europe, because he brought us out\u201d. He thinks we should also be \u201casking our government to stop trying to pander to the sort of moral lack that Farage represents\u201d. He elaborates: \u201cI\u2019ve always thought this about Keir Starmer<\/a>, [that] he just needs to be more of a leader, stop just trying not to get caught out all the time. It\u2019s terrible the way that all these flags are now appearing behind him… just trying to sort of ape the aesthetics and messaging of Reform. Don\u2019t do that. Have some f***ing balls and say that you stand up for decency, and you have a moral core that means you\u2019re not going to let the most marginalised people in society be trampled on yet again.\u201d<\/p>\n He recalls a point that he made on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg before the election \u2013 \u201cI said, Labour is just kind of Conservative-lite now, but [since then] it\u2019s becoming sort of Reform lemonade.\u201d<\/p>\n I mention how Twitter\/X amplifies hate speech. Cumming, who once told Harry Potter producers to \u201cf*** off\u201d during negotiations for the role of Prof Gilderoy Lockhart (eventually played by Kenneth Branagh), has opinions on the views pushed by JK Rowling<\/a> about trans people. \u201cI thought feminism was about equality,\u201d he says. \u201cWomen being equal with everyone else in society. And yet it appears…\u201d <\/p>\n He focuses his thoughts. \u201cI\u2019ve kind of moved away from being obsessed with the horror of things that have come out of that quarter, of trans rights being perceived as anti-women\u2019s rights. But there\u2019s several things that stick out to me \u2013 and I don\u2019t want to get into a battle at all with her, because I feel that the best way to deal with her is to give her less attention.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there was a thing,\u201d he continues, \u201cwhere she very kindly gave money to open a rape crisis centre in Edinburgh \u2013 a great thing to do. I mean, bravo. But then she said that trans women were not allowed… That\u2019s transphobia. At the worst and the most awful time a person could experience, you\u2019re saying, \u2018No, I\u2019m not going to help you, because you are trans.\u2019 I just feel like we have to call it what it is.\u201d <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Marvel to behold: Cumming as Nightcrawler in \u2018X2: X-Men United\u2019 (20 Century Fox\/Disney)<\/p>\n We return to theatre \u2013 specifically, to the cornucopia of celebrity-led productions increasingly dominating West End billboards, showcasing stars from Nicole Scherzinger to Sigourney Weaver. Some argue that these A-lister-led vehicles have stopped theatres from taking risks with unknown casts. \u201cStunt casting is a tale as old as time,\u201d Cumming says. \u201cI always think that if people say, \u2018Oh, isn\u2019t it terrible using all these pop stars?\u2019, if they can\u2019t do it [on stage], then people are not stupid. The novelty of seeing a pop star, or whatever, goes pretty fast if they\u2019re s***.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to Cumming, you realise there\u2019s no protective carapace; he\u2019s genuine, open. Not that I\u2019m surprised. With unblinking candour, his autobiography, 2014\u2019s bestselling Not My Father\u2019s Son, detailed the sadistic abuse he and his older brother suffered at the hands of their father while growing up on a country estate in Angus, Scotland. A second memoir, 2021\u2019s Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life, also reflected on its lasting impact while recounting a whole lot of hedonism. \u201cNo one ever fully recovers from their past,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n How does he feel now? \u201cI have therapy all the time,\u201d Cumming says. \u201cStill I talk about it a lot. I have to. I have to remember that every experience I have is infused with what happened in my childhood. Even though I\u2019m a happy person, I have to understand that I will always have that there with me. I\u2019ve always got to monitor it and make sure it\u2019s not taking over my thoughts. I think any abuse victim would tell you the same thing.\u201d Part of the reason he wrote Baggage, he adds, was to challenge the American perception that \u201cAlan\u2019s recovered, everything\u2019s tied up with a bow. A happy ending.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n High camp: Cumming in his element as host of \u2018The Traitors US\u2019 (Peacock)<\/p>\n Cumming, who has been married to artist Grant Shaffer since 2012, splits his time between Scotland and the US, where he\u2019s built an extensive film and TV career since those late-Nineties wobbles. Unsurprisingly, there\u2019s not one role for which he gets recognised the most. Yes, there are the obvious big hitters \u2013 Spy Kids, X2: X-Men United, and The Good Wife, the last of which earned him three Emmy nominations. And not to forget, his unlikely post-Kubrick assignment, on which he had \u201can absolute blast\u201d \u2013 the nudge-nudge-wink-wink romp Spice World: The Movie, starring the Spice Girls<\/a> at the height of Girl Power. <\/p>\n But there\u2019s also The Traitors<\/a> US, which Cumming presents with a shade more flamboyance than his UK counterpart, Claudia Winkleman<\/a>. \u201cWhat is silly is that the American version of the show is much camper and more theatrical than the British version,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s surely a first, as American versions of things tend to be dumbed down or lose their camp.\u201d A possibility dawns on him. \u201cI think that\u2019s because of me.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Stealing](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/maxresdefault-(1).jpeg\")
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