“I Think About It as a Character”: ‘THR Frontrunners’ Q&A With ‘The Traitors’ Host Alan Cumming

In this edition of THR Frontrunners, Emmy-nominated actor and host Alan Cumming opened up — and shared plenty of behind-the-scenes secrets — about Peacock’s smash hit reality competition series The Traitors at a live event hosted by the San Vicente Bungalows in Los Angeles.

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“I feel like it’s a huge acting job,” says Cumming, who scored his fifth Emmy nomination for The Traitors , which also earned a nod for best reality competition series in addition to reality competition host. “I think about it as a character. Obviously it’s me — his name’s Alan Cumming — but obviously it’s not really me. I don’t really sound like that. I don’t dress like that. I don’t have a castle. Alas, that’s too bad.”

The Traitors (an Americanized version of a Dutch series, which is inspired by classic party games like Mafia) brings together a cast of reality TV stars from series like The Challenge , Love Island , Survivor , The Bachelor and Real Housewives to play a game of treachery and murder — and compete for a cash prize of more than $200,000. Each episode sees the players competing in physical challenges to add money to the prize pot. But hidden among them are three traitors, who each night “murder” one of the “faithfuls” — eliminating a player from the running. It’s up to the faithfuls to figure out who the traitors are and banish them at each episode’s roundtable, in which tensions flare up when accusations of double-crossing are lobbied between players (and those accusations are often incorrect, as seen when faithfuls banish one of their own to the traitors’ delight).

Cumming admits he’s not a fan of reality TV, so he often is unfamiliar with the contestants before the show begins filming. “I don’t really know who a lot of them are, but I really study very hard,” he says of the “crash course” into the players’ biographies just before shooting a season. “It’s important for me,  especially in the first interviews that I do with them, that I’m sort of all fair with their shtick.”

Considering where the contestants come from, there’s plenty of drama on the show — and factions form quickly based on the reality shows the players represent. For example, the second season saw cliques form between the gamers (from The Challenge , Survivor , Big Brother , etc.) and the Bravo stars (Season 2 featured alumni from Real Housewives of Orange County, Miami and Atlanta).

“They were always going, why are you always gunning for the Housewives?” recalls Cumming. “I think it’s interesting that the different types of reality stars go into these little packs. If one of them is attacked, they kind of rally around like it’s an attack on them too. It’s sort of feudal, and it’s very like the show.” Of course, that kind of infighting always makes for good television — but for The Traitors, it’s simply part of the game. “A lot of the show, I feel it’s like Lord of the Flies ,” adds Cumming. “Everyone gets into the little packs, and then it becomes ‘kill the pig!’ Nobody actually really has any rationale about it. I mean, from a sociological point of view, I find it endlessly fascinating.”

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Any fan of reality TV can expect some knock-down, drag-out arguments between cast members — which certainly happens during the tense roundtable discussions that, more often than not, end with a faithful banished from the game. For Cumming, maintaining a poker face while knowing exactly who is lying to their peers is the biggest challenge.

“Sometimes I feel like, Oh, my God, is there going to be a fight? I felt that a couple of times in this [upcoming third] season — I thought it was going to get really ugly,” says Cumming, teasing the upcoming season that lands on Peacock in January. And it’s in those moments that the producers, communicating with the host through an earpiece, have to intervene and remind Cumming not to react and give it all away.

“When people I know are traitors react to [a faithful being eliminated], I’m in awe and horrified by their reaction, sometimes by the overreacting that’s involved — that’s my department!” says Cumming. “That’s what I think makes the show great. We all know who [the traitors are]. So when you see that level of commitment and overacting, it’s, it’s fun — but also galling, you know, that people are able to do that.”

This edition of THR Frontrunners is brought to you by Peacock.

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