ALAN CUMMING JOINS LULU FOR DOUBLE EPISODE OF TURNING POINTS PODCAST
Emmy, Tony, BAFTA, and Olivier Award winning actor Alan Cumming joins Lulu for a double episode of her podcast Turning Points – listen here: Spotify | Apple. Across the two episodes, Lulu and Alan talk about his childhood, his experience in the Marvel universe, working on The Traitors, and so much more.
ON HIS CHILDHOOD:
A: When you’re scared of things in your childhood … and you know, one of your parents is your bully, that casts such a long shadow in your life and I’m still working through that, still. But the other thing is that, you know, my ‘workiness’ and my drive in that way, I don’t want to attribute that to my dad not loving me. I sort feel like, I guess I’m trying to prove something, but I’m actually proving something for myself… you know, when someone sort of tells you you’re worthless and takes pleasure in hurting you who’s supposed love you and supposed to sort of look after you, it definitely makes you very self-aware and makes you have to make up your own… be vigilant about yourself and make decisions about everything, including yourself. But it also makes you think ‘fuck you – I’m gonna do what I want to do, I’m going to live my life.’
ON STARRING IN TWO MASSIVE PRODUCTIONS WHILST HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (1993):
A: I finished Hamlet on the Saturday night, on Thursday night Cabaret opened… you know, I was having a crazy time in my life at the time. Then four years later, it came to Broadway and I was in a much better place. I was more comfortable at everything… I was basically having a nervous breakdown at the time of when I was doing Cabaret in London.
L: You recognised that you had a nervous breakdown?
A: Oh, yes, I definitely, I think I had, yeah. I didn’t go to a doctor but I was like, you know, couldn’t function. I was getting divorced. I was having all these things. That’s when I remembered all the stuff about my dad, and I just had to check out for a while. I was in a terrible state. I just couldn’t get dressed. I couldn’t, you know, I was in this daze because suddenly I was remembering things I’d actually suppressed. I’d suppressed memories. And then now after all the lots of therapy, I know the reason I suppressed them was my body protecting me, my mind was protecting me because it’s like, this is too much to handle right now.
ON HELPING OTHERS:
A: Finding who you are can mean lots of things like, you know, being happy with who you are – that can be people coming out and being queer and all that sort of stuff. The more honest and open and sort of not caring about, letting go of worries about how you’re perceived and the white men in suits, the happier I’ve been.
A: When I wrote the book about my dad, which came about because of a series of circumstances that he suddenly came back into my life, telling that final part of my story that I hadn’t really ever talked about very publicly was unexpectedly so brilliant… because so many other people who had gone through similar things or had a variety of different things in their lives said to me ‘because you’ve spoken out about what was your demon, now I feel empowered to talk about mine’. And so you realise that you help so many people by being authentic and honest. And you just, you sort of think you’re doing it for you, and you have to do it for you, but actually, it was such a great surprise to me.
ON MEETING PRINCESS ANNE:
A: When I went to get my OBE – which I’ve since give back anyway, that’s another story – but when I went to get it, I was going to Buckingham Palace and I got a kilt suit made. The night before my chum came over to my flat, and I just come from Australia, so I was all jet lagged. And they said ‘what kilt is the tartan of that, Alan?’ It was Hunting Cumming. But instead of saying Hunting Cumming, I said C*nting Humming. And I just thought, ‘oh my God, tomorrow I’m going to say the C word to Princess Anne. I’m gonna go to Buckingham Palace and call her up, you know, not call her a C word, but say, C*nting Humming instead of Hunting Cumming’. So I’m at Buckingham Palace, waiting in the line to get my wee thing. I was just going, ‘Hunting Cumming Hunting Cumming’. And she never even asked me, I was furious.
ON ‘WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE’:
A: I remember thinking, this is the best thing about being famous that has happened to me… What a gift I can give to my mum to be able to find out what actually happened to her dad. Then I am about start filming and literally the night before I start filming my brother calls up in a total state saying that my dad wants to get in touch with me. And I’m like, ‘Why? What? What is it?’ And there’d been journalists and reporters at his house, and that’s happened over the years, you know, reporters going to both my parents for various things. He said he wants me to know something. And my brother didn’t want to tell me on the phone. I was, like, ‘well, tell me, because I’m coming’. He was living in Southampton, and he came up on the train and I was just frenetic. I didn’t know what he was going to say. It was just awful.
Anyway, we went on the roof of my flat in London, and he told me that my dad had reached out to him to tell me that I wasn’t his biological son. The reason he was doing that was because he knew that I was going do the Who Do You Think You Are? and he was worried that I was going to find out about that on the show. And he wanted to tell before I find out in front of the cameras and millions of people. I mean, it was just such a mindfuck.
NB – Alan then discovered through a DNA test that he was his dad’s biological son.
ON BEING SCOTTISH:
A: I am an actor because the values I have are completely about Scotland. Fairness; thinking there should be a safety net; the kindness that I have, is because I was brought up with it; that you should look after other people, you should be concerned. You know, I went to drama school and Scotland, my mum and dad’s taxes, paid for that, it was completely free. I got a grant and everything. Then I started off in subsidized theatres, you know acting and things like that. So, when you think about, if that was in America, I would never be an actor. My mum and Dad would never be able to afford to send me. So I really think that so much of my success is to do with where I was from and both in those terms about education but also in the values that I have as a person, as an artist.
I think we have a very strong sense of self as Scottish people. And also, I think we grow up knowing that we’re sort of slightly persecuted. You know, historically we’ve been, even right now it’s happening with the steel plant here in England is being saved. Guess what? There’s one in Scotland closing down too. So that happens, that’s an actual real thing that happens. So what does that say to you? We’re less than. So, I think we grew up with a little bit of an inferiority complex. A chip, maybe a big chip. And that becomes a chip. Yes. And then it becomes a fish supper.
ON MARVEL:
A: Last week I was in my trailer, I had my first, you know, full wig, contact lenses, teeth, make blue makeup, everything. And they (the directors) came down to have a look at me and all the producers and then they said, ‘can we just remind you of the story?’ I was like, ‘yes, that would be good’. And they said this thing about, ‘oh, and then this happens and you know, this planet, something happens to this planet and you did it’. And I stood outside of myself for a moment. Look at me, I’m blue. Funny lenses. Funny, like, hoofs. And these two men and all these people standing by are seriously having a serious conversation about different planets and different metaverses and blah, blah, and I kind of lost the plot. But it’s one of many things that is something, like, the sort of cyclical nature of life that’s coming back into my life again.
A: When I was doing these stunts last week for the Avengers, the stunt men could easily have been my children. I mean, easily. I mean everybody can be my children, I’m like 60. And it’s so funny just you forget that. Also they were so amazed that I could, you know, get off the ground, like rollover and we were boxing and they was saying ‘oh you have a very good left hook Alan’ and I was like I know! But of course, the next day I was ouch. But I see they were actually only saying that because they thought I was going to be decrepit.
ON THE TRAITORS:
A: So I remember my agent said, ‘oh, there’s this thing they want you to do and it’s set in a castle and it’s these people and they’re sort of getting murdered and things’. I was like ‘what?’ I didn’t know quite what it was. They sent the Dutch one and I was like – what? The way that it is compulsive, the thing of like, when you know that people are lying and you’re watching them lie and you want to know people. I got really obsessed. So anyway, and it wasn’t at all as sort of big production as the one now. Like I play a sort of a character. I think of him as a character. And now apparently my agent said that now people are, because it’s been such a success, that people are saying, ‘oh, we want like the Alan Cumming thing’, like someone on these shows to be like, to be a character – to do the thing that I’ve done, which is sort of to subvert the form of a competition show like that, by playing a character, rather than just being, ‘hello, I’m Alan’.
A: Lala, my dog, is now an international star because of that (Traitors). It’s so crazy. She does get recognised on the street. Like, when Grant takes her, or my assistant takes her. I guess maybe they know where I live, but people say, ‘is that Lala? The dog from Traitors?’ It’s hilarious. She gets recognised. She was a little street dog in Costa Rica, now she’s an international star. She is a queen.
ON MEETING TINA TURNER:
A: I met Tina Turner… she was so cute. When we did the premiere at Leicester Square, I was waiting to go on stage to be introduced. And it was Judi Dench in front of me and Tina Turner behind me. I thought, what a sandwich. And she had like gold eye shadow on and I was like, oh, ‘I love your eye shadow’. And she went, ‘I have golden eyes and golden toes’. I never forgot that.
ON HIS ROLE IN THE 17TH JAMES BOND: GOLDEN EYE:
A: So in the midst of me being having a nervous breakdown. I went and auditioned for a thing and I got it. And I was suddenly in a James Bond film. It was pretty a huge thing for me in my life. I mean, it is still the thing, of all the things I’ve done… That’s the thing that most people shout at me or ask me to say. And I guess other characters that are iconic and people always talk about, but they don’t have catchphrases like that, I love a catchphrase actually.
ON BEING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF PITLOCHRY FESTIVAL THEATRE:
A: They said to me, ‘when you leave in a few years, when you’ve done it for a few, what do you want people to think about your time at Pitlochry?’ And I thought about it and I thought, I want them to think, ‘gosh, I went to that building and I had a really great time, I saw stuff and I did things that I didn’t think I would like or that I would ever do’. And also, wasn’t it funny when that show was from Pitlochry and then it went to transfer to Broadway? So next season, next year is when my plays are happening, the first season of plays I have chosen and we’ve been talking to producers… Pitlochry is going to Broadway baby, we could be going to Broadway.
ON BEING IN THE PUBLIC EYE:
A: I feel very, very lucky as a person who is in the public eye… that the person that I am in real life and the way that people perceive me is pretty much the same. I’m not someone who has to have a sort of public persona that’s different from who I actually am. I’ve worked at it, but also as I realised being coy about things to do with my sexuality or just to sort of protect people in my family or my relationships, just invited speculation and made things worse from the press or the whatever. And I just thought, ‘why don’t I just say it?’ So let’s talk about who I am and what I like. And it’s been a really amazing lesson that I look at my friends, it’s not like they have crazy other lives that are terrible, but they are just not the same person in their real lives as they are in their public personas, and I realise there’s a slight stress and a slight… price you have to pay for that and I feel I don’t have that because I’m connecting.
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