Arts & Entertainment

‘Alan Cumming, Mad King of “The Traitors,”’ by Rebecca Alter

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Quick, what’s your favorite Alan Cumming role? Nightcrawler? The Emcee? GoldenEye? Maybe you’re partial to Eli Gold of The Good multiverse; I’m a Sandy Frink superfan myself. But on Peacock’s delightfully deranged celebreality competition The Traitors, Cumming’s performance of himself is fast becoming a major contender for the top slot on his IMDb page. As host, Cumming lords over a collection of D-listers backstabbing, banishing, and begging each other for mercy in an effort to gather the finale’s grand-prize pot. But what sets The Traitors apart from other shows about “a bunch of people living and fighting together in a big house,” as Cumming puts it to Vulture, isn’t just the “delicious way he purrs about murrrrder and treachery,” writes Rebecca Alter. As producer, he has a hand in selecting the Traitors responsible for most of that backstabbing and banishing, writing his own lines for the “dandy Scottish Laird” persona he created for the show, and, of course, selecting kaleidoscopic costumes that pop against the regal Highland setting. “He came to be this stern daddy. He’s cheeky, but also, don’t fuck with him,” Cumming tells Rebecca. But despite that foreboding veneer, it’s clear that no one — not the contestants, the casual viewers, or the Redditors hanging on to every chess play and countermove — is having more fun.

—Julie Kosin, senior editor, Vulture

Banish Me, Daddy Alan Cumming is reshaping the idea of a reality TV host with his unbending performance as the mad king of Traitors.

Photo: Beth Sacca
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