Alan Cumming, 61, has admitted he struggles to understand the Avengers: Doomsday storyline.
Cumming stars in the upcoming movie as Nightcrawler, a character he last portrayed in 2003’s X2: X-Men United. The movie is set to be a massive blockbuster, with advance ticket sales passing $50 million three months before its Dec. 18 release in theaters. But there’s one problem.
“To be honest,” Cumming said on SiriusXM, “I don’t fully understand the plot.”
Marvel is infamous for taking extreme measures to avoid spoilers; as a result, they withheld a complete script from Cumming while filming. That, plus the fact that he shot most of his scenes in front of a blue screen instead of in a clear setting, meant Cumming was acting without much context.
Once, when he was shooting a scene in the backlot of the studio, which he said was rare, a man began briefing him.
“‘So right now, Alan, these giant robots are blah blah,’” Cumming said. “And [he] started to tell me the thing, and I was like, ‘You know what, thank you so much, but just tell me where I point my...whatever I point. And I’ll do that. Really, I just know I’m here to run around.’”
Another source of confusion was that Cumming’s Nightcrawler mostly plays opposite Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, but the two actors were never on set at the same time. Cumming mostly shot with a body double instead of Pugh herself, and the same was true for Pugh, 30.
Cumming ran into Pugh at the Emmys, where he later won Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program for hosting The Traitors. He chatted with Pugh about the odd protocol.
“I said, ‘Gosh, it’s so funny. I’ve never met you, but you lay on top of me, or your body double did,’” he said. “And she goes, ‘Yeah, I lay on top of you as well, but it was your body double.’”
