Alan Cumming Didn’t Want to Make Just Another Mean, Formulaic Docuseries With ‘Club Cumming’

After an illustrious career bringing scripts to life on the stage and screen, Alan Cumming has found himself as the current reining Emmy winner for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program. He’s now returning to the unscripted well on Monday for “Club Cumming” on WOW Presents Plus — with his name on the line.

“It’s become this real, true community center and a safe space. Ironically, it all came out of me having parties after performances of the musical ‘Cabaret’ — and how awful that we are now living the actual story of ‘Cabaret’ in America? Club Cumming has become one of the sort of places that, for the queer community, is a place to gather and to feel joy and to be able to dance and resist and persist. It’s always been a bit like that, but it’s more so of late,” the actor told TheWrap. “What is also great about the show is just showcasing some of the amazing young queer people who are working there in their lives and just seeing what they’ve got to deal with on a day-to-day basis.”

The six-part docuseries follows cabaret singer Daphne Always, gogo dancer and drag performer Michelle Wynters, drag queen Brini Maxwell, drag king Cunning Stunt, comedian Jake Cornell and club co-owner/manager Darren Dryden, as well as Cumming himself, as they mix and mingle at work in Manhattan.

“There’s obviously many other great people who work there, and I even thought at one point to include some of the regular audience members, too; our regular clientele,” Cumming added. “We’ve got the bar staff and the performers … it was nice to have a mix. We wanted to showcase as many trans people as we could, because I feel that’s really important to make sure that there is trans presence to redress the balance of erasure in popular culture.”

The East Village club itself opened in 2017, so why did it take nearly a decade for cameras to be welcomed inside?

“Over the years, people have wanted to do a show about Club Cumming. My big thing about it is that I didn’t want to follow that generic formula of who’s shagging who and creating drama — that didn’t interest me,” Cumming explained. “I didn’t want it to be a sort of downtown New York version of ‘Vanderpump Rules.’ I mean, lots of people are shagging and there obviously is conflict, but it’s not performative and it’s not the main thing. I just didn’t like the way that that kind of lowest-common-denominator sort has gone everywhere in all those shows. That was really one of the reasons why we didn’t make a show for so long.”

“We didn’t want to besmirch it with those reality show confines. I mean, there is some drama, of course, but the drama is like, ‘Is Daphne going to move to Iceland?'” he continued. “I think maybe people are getting a little tired of that sort of thing — the meanness and that kind of formula. Of course, everyone loves it and I work with a lot of them on ‘The Traitors.'”

In addition to “Club Cumming” and “The Traitors,” the BAFTAs host still has a ton on his plate, including returning as Nightcrawler in “Avengers: Doomsday,” serving as artistic director Scotland’s Pitlochry Festival Theatre and even taking a break from his “The High Life” dress rehearsal to do this very interview.

“If you think of the idea of being an artist as being a storyteller and you want to create a world, I feel I’ve sort of manifested Club Cumming because I’ve told people how I want it to be: I have created a world, I’ve created a narrative, created a story — visually as well as metaphorically — and people have made it. I have encouraged people to create this community that is exactly how I would want it to be: Full of kindness and diversity and naughtiness,” Cumming shared. “Great friendship and great support and all those things have come together. If you have ever dressed a film, it’s a really amazing feeling about something that was inside your head being on the screen, an image or a sequence. In a way, Club Cumming is like that for me.”

“There’s an understandable kind of trajectory if you’re an artist, because what you’re wanting to do is the complete opposite of the thing you’ve done before; to always challenge yourself and do new things,” he concluded. “It’s very much going back to your roots and giving back and just paying homage to the worlds that made you — celebrating the queer culture that I have been a part of; bringing the spotlight that comes with you.”

“Club Cumming” premieres worldwide Monday on WOW Presents Plus.

The post Alan Cumming Didn’t Want to Make Just Another Mean, Formulaic Docuseries With ‘Club Cumming’ appeared first on TheWrap.