Alan Cumming opens up about dancing with Liza Minnelli, breaking the internet and coping with a dark past

Alan Cumming calls himself “a messy performer,” but what I see is his mutability. He’s starred in films with Spice Girls, Spy Kids, Flintstones and James Bond. On stage he’s played Hamlet, Macbeth, Macheath and Robert Burns (in a danced solo performance). Most famously, he was a sexy, slinky master of ceremonies in Cabaret, directed by Sam Mendes in both London and New York. On television, he’s best known as Eli Gold, a blunt political operative on The Good Wife and The Good Fight. Recently he’s been giddily hamming it up in the musical parody Schmigadoon! on AppleTV+. (The sequel, Schmicago, is coming soon.)

Then there’s everything else Cumming does and is: novelist, memoirist, talk show host, nightclub owner, perfumer,…