Alan Cumming on Acting as Host in ‘The Traitors’

For Alan Cumming, internet hosting The Traitors is already the reward; his Emmy nomination for actuality or actuality/competitors host is only a bonus — one nearly as coveted as immunity from elimination.

“I really love doing it,” says Cumming of the hit Peacock collection (which additionally scored a nom for finest actuality competitors program) that has change into the streamer’s most watched unscripted title. “I love the fact it’s connected with everyone in this way. Everyone’s really obsessed by it.”

The Traitors, an Americanized model of the Dutch collection De Verraders (which takes inspiration from social gathering video games like Mafia), sees a solid of characters holed up in a grand Scottish citadel, tasked with uncovering which of the visitors are in truth traitors plotting to homicide their fellow contestants (dubbed “faithfuls”) in order to win a six-figure money prize. In every episode — after a grueling bodily problem so as to add cash to the prize pot — the contestants collect at a roundtable to vote off a doable traitor. And if an harmless devoted will get banished, the traitors strike that night time, “murdering” one other devoted till the taking part in subject dwindles to a small group of contestants vying for the prize cash. 

Any darkness amid the treachery and homicide is undercut by an inherent pleasure and silliness — all heightened by Cumming’s efficiency as the host, flamboyantly dressed in varied eye-popping fashions. Cumming admits that the gig didn’t come naturally at first. The actor treats the character — Alan Cumming — as another position, and the efficiency begins as soon as he steps into his unbelievable wardrobe. “Being on a film, you get dressed in the morning, get into your costume and makeup and hair,” says Cumming. “That is very important for me, to understand who the character is.” 

The present, too, is all about efficiency: The one solution to win the sport is by deceiving the others in the mansion, friendships and strategic alliances be damned. “We all lie, but we forget to see when people are lying or have to lie [to us],” explains Cumming of the present’s intrigue, particularly for viewers who could not observe competitors collection like Survivor or The Problem. “It’s a sociological thing. We’re a secret camera, getting to watch people do stuff we never normally get to [see].” 

The present’s opponents are additionally necessary items of the leisure puzzle, which is why The Traitors well pulls from different actuality TV reveals — and from tradition at giant. The place else may you discover a Dancing With the Stars performer and a RuPaul’s Drag Race alum battling Michael Jordan’s son, or a group ofReal Housewives going through down a former member of the British Parliament?

“That’s when the game works best, when people come on and understand their role,” says Cumming, who prepares for an upcoming season by understanding the contestants’ private manufacturers. One may assume that the alumni from Survivor, Large Brother and The Problem would out-skill and outsmart, say, a former Bachelor or Actual Housewives castmember, however Cumming notes that the latter figures are sometimes more proficient at deception. “The theory that gamers do better in this show … I think a lot of people underestimated [the Housewives].” (Actual Housewives of Atlanta and Married to Medication star Phaedra Parks deserves to be a frontrunner in a hypothetical Emmy race for finest actuality competitors contestant for her scene-chewing work on The Traitors.)

Additionally serving as a producer, Cumming excels at internet hosting — and recalling his iconic position as the Emcee in Cabaret, which gained him a Tony award, it looks like an ideal gig. That he earned his fifth Emmy nomination for The Traitors feels significantly candy contemplating his 4 earlier noms: three for his position of Eli Gold on The Good Spouse and one for co-hosting the Tony Awards with pal Kristin Chenoweth in 2016. “I act my socks off in The Traitors, just like I did on The Good Wife, and it’s this very juicy thing like I do in the theater or would do at the Tonys,” Cumming says.

The host is happy for a stunning third season, about which he’s principally mum — however he teases one participant’s significantly devious roundtable efficiency. “I can’t wait [for you to see] who it was, what it was — they were lying so profusely and dramatically. They were giving me a run for my money!” he says, recalling that his producer instructed him by way of earpiece that even he was shedding his poker face. That technical element — being fed strains and route in his ear — has been the largest talent to select up. “I like having a little earpiece in,” Cumming says with amusing. “I feel like Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show, but with better clothes.”