-Our first guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated
and Tony Award-winning actor you know from shows such as
"Schmigadoon!", "The Good Wife," and "The Good Fight."
He hosts "The Traitors," which is streaming now on Peacock.
Let's take a look.
♪♪
[ Cheering ]
♪♪
-Welcome to the Highlands of Scotland,
and welcome to "The Traitor."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Stunning, right?
-Yeah. -Yes!
-And what about the castle?
[ Laughter ]
My most esteemed guests.
You are about to enter a world of backstabbing and treachery.
And you thought "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills"
was bad. [ Laughter ]
-Please welcome back to the show
our friend Alan Cumming, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
It is so good to have you back.
-It's lovely to be here as always.
-You know, "treachery" is a really good word for you.
-Do you think?
-Yeah, "treachery" with your accent is just marvelous.
-The treachery, yes.
I just -- It's been such fun because of this show.
There's all these things about how I sound,
how I say "murder" and "quarter of a million dollars."
People are going absolutely nuts for it.
-You actually -- The way you say "quarter of,"
it makes it sound better than an actual million dollars.
-Yes.
I think it's such a lot of money, though,
to earn on a little game show. -Yeah.
And, now, this is -- You've been on this show
so many times promoting so many different things --
films, plays, one-man shows --
and now you're hosting a reality competition show.
Were you excited about this?
-Uh, I mean, I am excited.
-Yeah. -But it wasn't --
It wasn't, like, in my trajectory that I thought -- -
-Yeah, it wasn't on your to-do list.
-No. It just was one of these --
But I think I'm open to -- I obviously come and talk to you
about lots of weird things I've done.
Like, the last time, it was a solo dance theater piece.
Let's not forget. -Let's not.
-This is not as crazy as that.
But I just -- They asked me,
and I couldn't really understand why.
You know, I thought, "I'll take the meeting."
And then I realized they wanted me to play a character.
So, I mean, so I am hosting this,
but I'm really sort of an invented character.
Like, I'm called Alan Cumming,
but I say, "Welcome to my castle."
It's not my castle.
[ Laughter ] I don't have a castle.
And I have all these great costumes,
and I just sort of camp around down these corridors
saying things like -- Oh, so, what's great is
when people -- when people say they like the show now,
I leave little messages for them.
They say, "Oh, Alan, we're watching you."
I go, "Seth, you have received the most votes
and are banished from the game.
Please come forward to the Circle of Truth."
That's my catch for this.
-I'm so glad you finally got your own Circle of Truth.
You mentioned your clothes. I mean, it is --
Your sartorial splendor has always been on display.
But this is just -- [ Cheers and applause ]
And, now, this is a show --
I mean, we should get to the premise of the show.
-I should say the stylist who did all that
is called Sam Spector, and he's really good at it.
-He did a fantastic, fantastic job.
You -- So, the show is called "Traitor."
-Yeah. -And so three of the contestants
are sort of selected ahead of time to be --
-Yes, I tap them on the shoulder.
-Okay. Gotcha. -It's like that game "Mafia."
You know "Mafia"? -Mafia, murder, yeah.
-It's basically that. They just pinched it.
And so there's three traitors,
and then the other 17 are called "the faithful."
And then each night -- So, how the day goes is
that they meet in the morning, have breakfast,
and during the night,
one of them's been murdered by the traitors,
who all meet with cloaks on in a turret.
-Now, what are turrets for if not that?
-Exactly. And so they choose who they want to murder.
So that person doesn't appear at breakfast.
So they're all, "Oh," you know?
And then I appear in some ridiculous costume
and start spouting Shakespeare and tell them to --
Then there's a task that they all have to do together.
They have to work together, you see,
even though they're ultimately individually.
And they do things like get buried alive
and get, like, you know, maggots thrown on them and things
and jump out of a helicopter into a freezing-cold loch.
A nightmare.
And then they -- And then they come home,
and they're all talking and,
"Who's the traitor? Who's the traitor?"
And then there's my favorite bit.
It's called the Round Table.
There's a big round table, and they all --
And I say, you know, "How far would you go
for a quarter of a million dollars?"
And then, "The table is yours."
And so they all start bitching about each other...
And then they have to vote someone off.
And then that's when I say, "You've received the most votes."
And then somebody gets murdered,
and the whole circle of death happens again.
And then it's a thing that if you get --
So, if you get to the end and it's just the faithful,
they share all the money.
But if there's one faithful left,
he gets, or she gets, to keep all the money.
-Oh, that's very exciting. -Oh, it's obsessive.
I'm not a game-show sort of person
or a reality sort of person, but I --
It was my favorite thing I did last year.
I mean, I did lots of really exciting, challenging,
artistic things.
I'm like, "No. 'Traitors.'"
-You mentioned you don't watch a lot of these.
Now, I know the contestants
are a mix of sort of newbies to reality
and some reality stars from other competition shows.
-Yeah, there's ten each.
There's ten real people and then ten reality people.
-Yeah. -But --
-I think we all know... there's a difference.
-Yes.
But what I think is hilarious is,
I think I didn't realize this until I was talking about
doing this press tour --
that reality and porn are very similar
because, like, if you're in one porn film, you're a porn star.
These real people who are in this reality show
are now reality-show stars.
So you do one reality show, and you're a reality star.
-There you go.
-So there's a crossover of porn and reality.
-Yeah, that's true. -And I'm here for it.
-Yeah, no one, like, does one accidentally.
They're like, "I didn't know till it was over," yeah.
I got a lot more to ask you.
We'll be right back with more from Alan Cumming, everybody!