An invite to Alan Cumming’s castle is as dazzling on screen as it is off
The Traitors, where have you been and who have you been talking to?!For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s Peacock’s incredibly addictive reality game show, filled with twists and turns (and blindsides… and murders!), that is coming off its highly successful second season and was just been renewed for a third. (We can hardly wait!)The show features known reality stars of recent and yesteryear who are forced to lie, deceive, and build relationships with one another, all while being hosted at Alan Cumming’s gothic “castle” in the remote Scottish Highlands.Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.Cumming’s beginnings didn’t start in a castle, however.
In many ways, it was the opposite. The 59-year-old bisexual has said his childhood in eastern Scotland was one troubled by a strained relationship with an abusive father.Cumming has described his childhood as a time when his fondness for acting was developed out of necessity to survive rather than for creative expression or joy.
Eventually, he was forced to flee home, cutting off communication with his father for several years. After moving out, he launched his career in the UK by becoming a popular figure on Scottish and English stages.
He took small roles in various film and TV projects in late 1980s and early 1990s before landing his breakout role across the pond, playing Emcee in the 1998 revival of Cabaret on Broadway, which landed him his first Tony.Since appearing in Cabaret, some of Cumming’s other Broadway credits include the 2001 production of Design for Living by the great gay playwright Noël Coward, and in the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical The Threepenny Opera opposite longtime LGBTQ+ ally Cyndi Lauper.In 2006, he returned to the West End playing the lead role in Bent, a play about homosexuals in Nazi Germany.
