David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Plenty of actors light up a room, but Alan Cumming is more of a disco ball, reflecting every possible angle of show business. That's how the critic Emily Nussbaum introduced Alan Cumming when they sat down at the recent New Yorker Festival. He does seem to do it all. He acts in mainstream dramas like The Good Wife as well as more indie projects like his one man version of Macbeth. Cumming is a Broadway legend. He also owns a nightclub. He recorded a duet about Scottish independence with a Gaelic rapper. His memoir, Not My Father's Son was a bestseller. He stars in the Emmy winning reality show The Traitors on Peacock. Here's Alan Cumming at the New Yorker Festival speaking with staff writer Emily Nussbaum.

Emily Nussbaum: Straight out of Scotland, but eternally beloved in New York. Welcome, Alan Cumming.

Alan Cumming: Thank you. [applause] Thank you very much.

Emily Nussbaum: For anybody who hasn't seen it, Traitors is a reality show that stars reality stars from--

Alan Cumming: Mostly.

Emily Nussbaum: Mostly. The first season is different.

Alan Cumming: There's a lot of people from the reality universe as well as some random famous people. It's celebrities and they all go to a castle. It's supposed to be my castle. It's not. I pretend it is, and they play this game. It's basically the parlor game Mafia.

Emily Nussbaum: Who is this guy who owns this castle? Did you think at all about him as a character? Does he have a backstory? Does he?

Alan Cumming: I think of him absolutely as a character. I think of him as this combination of a dandy Scottish Laird/James Bond villain/eccentric old-fashioned nut, and who has this big castle, or like that film clue or something. It's got all those combinations of these very theatrical camp in the true sense of camp, the wit and the sardonic kind of camp. He's imposing and scary, but not mean. I try not to engage with the contestants because of that. In filming, it's getting harder because they see me outside and I say things like this, but afterwards.

When we're at the time, I think I want them to be a little scared of me because I have to shout at them quite a lot to tell them to be quiet and things. It gets out of control sometimes. In this new season, I actually thought I was going to have to break up a fight, and I'm not. I don't do that very often. No, but I thought that in one of the round tables, it got so brutal that people get so passionate about it, and it was scary. I have to be really firm with them, and I have to-- I think being chatty and talking between takes is like being and staying in character in a way.

[music]

Alan Cumming: Well, good morning, my ever decreasing circle of friends. Last night, MJ, Kate, Trishell, and Parvati were hung out to dry, but it was Bergi who suffered the final devastating blow, brutally dispatched by the traitors.

[music]

Actress 1: Oh.

Alan Cumming: Players, despite the loss of Bergi, we must let bygones be bygones. Bye. Gone.

Actress 2: Oh, my God.

Actress 1: Savage.

Alan Cumming: Soon, players, you must turn your attention to today's mission. You'll be taking a little trip to my-- Well, let's call it a holiday home. I have a guest who's currently staying there who'll help you settle in. After all, who doesn't enjoy a little country escape?

Actress 2: Oh, God. Escape. Escape.

Actress 3: I think it's the cabin.

Alan Cumming: Oh, no. Head down there and I'll meet you afterwards. [foreign language].

[applause]

Emily Nussbaum: What was your perspective on reality television before you made the show?

Alan Cumming: [chuckles] Zero, really. Once in a while on a plane, I would watch The Kardashians or something or catch an episode of The Housewives, but not at all-- I never watched it and I don't know, just wasn't my thing. Never really engaged with it. Still don't.

Emily Nussbaum: Did you disapprove of it?

Alan Cumming: No, I don't. I mean, yes.

[laughter]

Alan Cumming: I was a bit judgy. The thing I don't like about a lot of those shows is that they laud and therefore encourage bad behavior and lack of kindness. That's what I don't like. [applause] Thank you. When people on these shows are mean, what they're doing is really aping the behavior that probably happened to them. Probably at school, someone was mean to them. Now that they have power because they have a disguise and they have a platform, they're basically not breaking the cycle and they're just repeating that bad behavior, and I don't like it.

I think the great thing I like about The Traitors is that it doesn't do that. It makes people have to work together. Of course, they do terrible things to each other in The Traitors, but it's about the game aspect rather than just being a meanie and just flinging wine at each other and stuff like that. Actually, this is a complete left field hilarious turn in my life and career to be hosting this show.

I really like it. Don't get me wrong, I love it. It's such fun, and also has brought me many great things. Other things have happened because of the success of this. When you're successful in one thing, it usually has a knock on effect in the other parts of your life. I've been around the block long enough to recognize that your career, not that feel I have been in the doldrums, but you have peaks and less big peaks.

Emily Nussbaum: You actually appeared on a very different reality show that you talk about in your memoir called Who Do You Think You Are? That was the name of it, right? Where it was a genealogy show-

Alan Cumming: Who Do You Think You Are?

Emily Nussbaum: -that traced the life of your grandfather. In that you were the subject, you were on the other side of the camera. I'm wondering, looking back on that experience, how you feel about it, whether you feel good about it, whether you feel ambivalent or if you feel regrets and whether you learned anything from it.

Alan Cumming: I certainly learned stuff from it. When it happened, when they asked me, I remember thinking, "Oh, this is the best thing that's happened to me about being famous." There was a mystery in my family, and they ask you if you'd like to be a part of it. They you go away and research you for a while, a couple of months. They come back and say, "Yes, we want to do it." Then they say, "We're actually going to feature this area of your family." There was this mystery in my family, and I just remember thinking, "I'm going to be able, because I'm famous and the BBC's research and all the things, that will make my mom have this knowledge that she's never had about what happened to her father and what a great gift that is."

Then a month later I was like, "This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me about being famous." I had to call up my mom and tell her something truly awful, which was that her father had died in Malaysia playing Russian roulette. Yes. I met you know someone who had known him.

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