Alan Cumming: 'People Are Terrified To Speak Out, But I Feel Like It's My Duty'

Ask anyone in your life to name their favourite Alan Cumming performance, and you’re most likely going to get a completely different answer every single time.

Over the last four decades, the Scottish actor has racked up an enviably eclectic mix of roles on both the screen and stage, ranging from cult comedy and prestige drama to action-packed blockbusters and family-friendly adventure movies.

Who else, after all, can say they’ve played a James Bond villain and a Marvel superhero, shared the screen with Carrie Bradshaw and Fred Flintstone or spent time in the Traitors castle, the Spice Busand a tiny camper van with Miriam Margolyes?

As a result, Alan says that when he’s approached in public, it’s “really hard to tell” which part of his vast CV it is that people are going to want to talk to him about.

“It varies hugely, and it depends on the demographic,” he tells HuffPost UK.

“With young people, it usually tends to be Sky Kids. A whole generation of kids grew up with me as a sort of part of their childhood. It’s really lovely, actually, when young adults approach me in a really awe-struck way because of those films.”

James Bond, he says, is another obvious “big one”, as are the X-Men movies (he played a secret minion of Sean Bean’s villainous “Janus” opposite Pierce Brosnan in 1995’s GoldenEye, and is due to reprise his role of Nightcrawler from the X-Men series in the next Avengers film), while “theatre geeks” will often want to discuss his stint as the Emcee in the musical Cabaret, for which he won his first Tony Award.

Understandably, these days he’s also getting a lot of attention in public for his work on the reality TV juggernaut The Traitors (he’s been presenting the American version since 2023, and has already won four Emmys as both its host and producer), though he says he’s still just as likely to be approached about his acclaimed BBC comedy The High Life and his Emmy-nominated guest appearance in The Good Wife.

“Sometimes it’s funny because people come up to you and say lines from something – and it’s kind of embarrassing if you forget,” he admits.

“Romy And Michele is a case in point – we are going to do a sequel to that, so I have tried to get familiar more with it, I’ll have to watch it again – but people will come up and quote me lines from that, and I’m just like, ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’. It’s so funny.”

“Or sometimes they say a line and they go like that,” he says, leaving a pregnant pause in the air. “...Expecting you to finish it.

“It’s always really fascinating. I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I’ve never stopped working, so there’s a lot of content out there. And, of course, the longer you do it, the more things there could possibly be.”

“But I love when people – they mean well! – but they say things like that, ‘I’m probably the only person to have ever seen this film…’, and you think, ‘oh fuck you! And no, you’re not, bitch!’” he adds with a laugh.

It doesn’t just stop with his on-screen work either, as Alan says people have also been known to stop him in public to talk to him about his popular memoirs, in which he speaks candidly about themes like abuse and mental health.

“People respond to that, and that’s really great, when you’ve sort of inspired people to deal with things in their lives,” he enthuses.

“But I love when people come up to me just because they’ve had an amazing time at my club in New York, that’s great. Even when people come up to me and say things like, ‘I loved your soap!’. That cracks me up!”

Already a celebrated actor, writer, director, producer, presenter, author and, indeed, soap entrepreneur, Alan is adding even more strings to his bow with his latest venture, as the newly-appointed Artistic Director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre for its 2026 season, during which the venue will celebrate its landmark 75th anniversary.

True to form, Alan’s inaugural season features a wide variety of different shows, with the programme including the Scottish premiere of the musical Once, the debut of the “concert-style play” I Can Die Too (co-written by Alan himself, Sally George and Tony winner Frances Ruffelle), a reimagining of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, a My Fair Lady revival with Alan as Henry Higgins and the inaugural Out In The Hills festival, a celebration of “all things LGBTQIA+” with scheduled appearances from Graham Norton, Sir Ian McKellen and Armistead Maupin, alongside the Scottish writers Val McDermid and Jackie Kay.  

Despite being born “just down the road” from the venue, and being no “stranger to Scottish theatre”, Alan admits he wasn’t familiar with the Pitlochry Festival Theatre until fairly recently, and had “never set foot here” until two years ago, when he fronted the Channel 4 documentary All Aboard! Scotland’s Poshest Train.

“I was gobsmacked by it,” he recalls “I was shown around by my predecessor as part of the filming, and I was so amazed by the facilities, how stunningly beautiful it is.

“I had no idea! I had no idea about the workshops, I had no idea there was a studio now as well as the main auditorium, I didn’t know about the gardens, and the amphitheatre. I mean, it was really magical to me, it was kind of like Brigadoon, like I’d stumbled upon this magical, mystical land that I didn’t know existed.”

Alan reasoned that, if he had such a big reaction to the theatre when he was introduced to it, “there would be millions more people in the world who would feel that too”.

“That’s literally why I’m doing this job,” he shares. “The thing with Pitlochry is it’s a commitment to get here. You know, most of our audience have to travel. I’m going to make this up – because that’s what people do in the news in this country now… – but around 75% of our audience have to travel more than an hour to get here. That could be wrong, but it’s in the ballpark.

“So, it is a destination. That’s what I have leant into, trying to make it even more of a destination. And I want to make it an international destination, both for audiences and for artists. That’s my goal.”

He continues: “My pitch was to bring artists here to Pitlochry – to this beautiful place with these great facilities – away from the glare of making work in a cosmopolitan theatre town or city. To make really good work, you have to be away from the normal pressures, and you have to be able to focus, and you have to have great facilities. And that’s what this has in spades.”

“At the same time,” he notes, he also hopes to “involve the local community” as much as possible, encouraging them to “come in and use the building more, and to sort of return to its more sort of the community centre roots that I think all theatres used to be and should be”.

“I’ve tried to both bring big creative names and big titles – but also tried to encourage new work and especially indigenous Scottish talent as well.

“And I want the audience to be a part of this – to come and see the people you know and love, but also to take some time to look at some of the things that you might not have heard of, to encourage them and to support them, because otherwise they’re not going to be people you know and love in the future if you don’t do that.”

For Alan, the role of theatre in our society is as important as ever, especially in the current political climate.

“Theatre is a place where people come together to have a communal experience,” he says. “The thing with theatre, it’s always been about challenging people and evoking people – and you can do that, often, through entertaining them.

“I think comedy is the greatest way to change people’s minds, actually. But there’s a big spectrum.”

Broadening people’s minds is something Alan has long been associated with, not just with his varied screen career, but also his TV interviews and appearances out of character, advocating for marginalised communities and speaking out about issues close to his heart.

Just this year, he guest hosted an episode of Jimmy Kimmel’s US talk show, where he spoke out in staunch support of the trans community and called for people to counteract the current social divisions with kindness and compassion. The clip in question has since racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, and Alan says he was “bombarded” with positive messages afterwards.

Regrettably, though, people in Hollywood speaking out is something that Alan is seeing happening less and less in recent history.

“Of course I’ve noticed it,” he laments. “People are scared. Especially in America – people are terrified to speak out. You should be scared! You could get attacked, you could get deported… it’s just awful, it’s a terrifying time. If you speak up and are a voice of descent, you risk a lot.

“After Kimmel, my publicist was saying, ‘you’re going to get deported, you’re going to get deported’. There was such a big response to it, and all I was doing was telling the truth and speaking up! I wasn’t being insulting, I was just telling the truth.

“But actually, it really was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I was saddened by the fact that there was such a positive response, because I realised that it happens so rarely anymore, that people do what I was doing, speaking out and telling the truth.”

He shares: “And then I realised how privileged I am – in that I have another life, I have a life here. I have a home here, I have a passport, I spend more time here, actually, than I do in America right now.

“And so, I feel, I guess, privileged and a bit protected by that. If I did get deported, if something happened in that way, then I wouldn’t be sent to a Venezuelan prison, I would be sent to Scotland. So not so bad!”

He adds: “In a funny way, it made me realise that I have a duty to keep speaking up. And I want to keep doing that. 

“I’m also trying to highlight [social injustices], but also not be mean. I don’t think there’s a point in [being mean]. I was part of the ‘No Kings’ march committee, and my whole message was ‘don’t be violent – if there’s any violence sit down, don’t give them what they want, don’t stoop to their level, violence is not going to help this, they want this to descend into violence’.

“It’s terrifying, especially in America,” he admits, but acknowledges that “it’s pretty scary here” in the UK at the moment, too.

Alan highlights that one especially “scary” by-product of the current culture is that “film companies and networks are not taking risks”, meaning queer stories are “sort of disappearing from mainstream culture”.

One way he’s trying to reverse this is by co-founding The Necessary Foundation, which aims to “raise money to let young queer and trans people make films, tell their stories and to get their start in the industry”.

“We need to make sure that those stories are still being told, because otherwise we just disappear,” he insists.

After reaching a new milestone when he celebrated his 60th birthday this year, Alan is, as they say, as “booked and busy” as ever, with a new season of The Traitors US in the pipeline as well as his work producing, directing and acting in Pitlochry’s upcoming season.

“I turned 60 this year, so I’ve been thinking a lot about age and stuff like that,” he says, saying that, as someone who’s worked consistently over the decades, he’s “constantly being reminded” of his past.

“When I look online, on Instagram and stuff, I am constantly bombarded with images of myself from 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago,” Alan explains. “You know when you see an old photo of yourself? You go, ‘oh look!’. I see that every fucking day.”

“There are actually accounts on Instagram who, every single day, post a picture of me – and I love it, because I’m like, ‘where was that?’ and ‘what was I wearing?’,” he admits.

“And so you see yourself age – and I’ve turned it into a really pleasant thing. It’s really helped me age, actually.”

“For me, that’s actually been really liberating,” he enthuses, pointing out that in an industry in which “some people really struggle with aging and seeing pictures of themselves from another time”, while others “get trapped and feel they have to stay at a certain age” or “were happy at a certain time and they want to try and recreate that in their face”, he’s managed to use this “bombardment” old pictures to help him “embrace” getting older.

Alan also observes that his role as a performer is also as clear as ever. “As an artist, I see my job as a provocateur – to challenge and to make people feel things that maybe they haven’t felt, maybe they don’t want to feel,” he says.

“But also just to challenge expectations and to remind people that they’re alive, and to let them hear of other people’s experiences. And trying to make them gasp!”

“Even if it’s because you’re appalled by my dress sense,” he jokes. “I just want to make you gasp.”

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Season 2026 runs from 24 May – 31 December 2026. Tickets are on general sale from Thursday 27 November. For further info and tickets visit pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com