Alan Cumming Says Returning to Nightcrawler Is ‘Really Healing’

In a new People interview, which we saw at Deadline, Cumming says his initial experience playing Nightcrawler for X2 was miserable. “I just came back. It was amazing. It was actually really— in a sort of ooey, gooey way, it was really healing and really nice to go back to something that it was a terrible experience when I did it the first time,” the actor said. “A great film, great film. I love the film.”

He went on to say the set in 2003 was “awful for a variety of reasons that I have talked about at length.” This refers to Cumming’s previous calling out of the “abusive” and “dangerous” set under director Bryan Singer, known predator.

In contrast, Cumming says the Doomsday set is a dream. “It was actually really great to go back. And especially, I’m 60 years old. I did not think I would be doing stunts, playing a superhero in my 60s. So that was great. And everyone was really nice. And I got it done really quickly because I couldn’t go, because of The Traitors, when most of my scenes were being shot. So I squashed them all together, and got a green screen and various things and little scenes of people here and there.”

So that therefore means Nightcrawler either won’t be on screen with very many (if any) other characters. We already gleaned that he had never met Pedro Pascal prior to guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live despite already filming Nightcrawler’s fight scene with Mr. Fantastic. Ah, the “fun” of filmmaking. At the very least, Cumming has had more fun playing the furry blue mutant again.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.