Alan Cumming on Acting as Host in ‘The Traitors’

For Alan Cumming, hosting The Traitors is already the reward; his Emmy nomination for reality or reality/competition host is just a bonus — one almost as coveted as immunity from elimination.

“I really love doing it,” says Cumming of the hit Peacock series (which also scored a nom for best reality competition program) that has become 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 version of the Dutch series De Verraders (which takes inspiration from party games like Mafia), sees a cast of characters holed up in a grand Scottish castle, tasked with uncovering which of the guests are in fact traitors plotting to murder their fellow contestants (dubbed “faithfuls”) in order to win a six-figure cash prize. In each episode — after a grueling physical challenge to add money to the prize pot — the contestants gather at a roundtable to vote off a possible traitor. And if an innocent faithful gets banished, the traitors strike that night, “murdering” another faithful until the playing field dwindles to a small group of contestants vying for the prize money. 

Any darkness amid the treachery and murder is undercut by an inherent joy and silliness — all heightened by Cumming’s performance as the host, flamboyantly dressed in various eye-popping fashions. Cumming admits that the gig didn’t come naturally at first. The actor treats the character — Alan Cumming — as any other role, and the performance begins once he steps into his fantastic 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 show, too, is all about performance: The only way to win the game 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 show’s intrigue, especially for viewers who may not follow competition series like Survivor or The Challenge. “It’s a sociological thing. We’re a secret camera, getting to watch people do stuff we never normally get to [see].” 

The show’s competitors are also important pieces of the entertainment puzzle, which is why The Traitors smartly pulls from other reality TV shows — and from culture at large. Where else might you find a Dancing With the Stars performer and a RuPaul’s Drag Race alum battling Michael Jordan’s son, or a team ofReal Housewives facing 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’ personal brands. One might assume that the alumni from Survivor, Big Brother and The Challenge would out-skill and outsmart, say, a former Bachelor or Real Housewives castmember, but Cumming notes that the latter figures are often more adept at deception. “The theory that gamers do better in this show … I think a lot of people underestimated [the Housewives].” (Real Housewives of Atlanta and Married to Medicine star Phaedra Parks deserves to be a frontrunner in a hypothetical Emmy race for best reality competition contestant for her scene-chewing work on The Traitors.)

Also serving as a producer, Cumming excels at hosting — and recalling his iconic role as the Emcee in Cabaret, which won him a Tony award, it seems like a perfect gig. That he earned his fifth Emmy nomination for The Traitors feels particularly sweet considering his four previous noms: three for his role of Eli Gold on The Good Wife and one for co-hosting the Tony Awards with friend 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 excited for a shocking third season, about which he is mostly mum — but he teases one player’s particularly devious roundtable performance. “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 told him via earpiece that even he was losing his poker face. That technical detail — being fed lines and direction in his ear — has been the biggest skill to pick up. “I like having a little earpiece in,” Cumming says with a laugh. “I feel like Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show, but with better clothes.” 

This story first appeared in the August 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.