Hosting 'The Traitors,' Alan Cumming Wants to Confound Expectations

It will take a major queen to dethrone RuPaul's hold on the Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program. After all, Mama Ru has won it for an unprecedented eight straight years! And she continues to wow with her meticulous styles and tireless hosting skills that help make "RuPaul's Drag Race" such a pleasure to watch.

But this season she has a major competitor in Alan Cumming, the queer host of Peacock's runaway smash "The Traitors." That there is such a buzz about the show shouldn't surprise anyone who has succumbed to its irresistible premise – a reality show based on treachery and murder; and the Cumming, whose smirky manner and outré outfits (all based on Tartan themes), only add to the show's badass fun. He has been nominated six times for an Emmy without a win. Will this time be the charm?

Cumming, according to an interview in IndieWire, confesses not to be a fan of reality television. "I'm still not," he adds.

But the show's creators came at him with the idea that he was playing a character – "this sort of heightened, quite theatrical host," he explains, and he was intrigued. "So I really got into the hang of it and I understood why they wanted me to do it after that. It's kind of a left field thing for someone like me to just suddenly be hosting a competition reality show. But I like that. I like confounding people's expectations."

Cumming cites his stylist Sam Specter as the person most responsible for shaping the character he plays on the series, which in its second season is competing with "RuPaul's Drag Race" for Outstanding Reality Competition Program. "I went to him and said all these things like Dandy Scottish laird, James Bond villain, tartan, lots of Scottish references. And then he took that and sort of ran with it," Cumming explains. "I just realized how much I depend on a costume designer or a stylist to get to my character. Because they've, to be honest, probably researched it a lot more than I have."

The big difference between Season One and Season Two of the series was that in the second the contestants were Reality Show stars. "It meant that everyone was coming into it at concert pitch... with their shtick already. So I think it really just upped the game in terms of confidence and kind of theatricality and drama, and those are the three words that could just encapsulate the whole show," explains Cumming. And it paid off – the American version of the Peacock series (there are British, Australian, and Canadian versions as well) – became a sensation.

What is important for Cumming, who is also a producer, is to have the competitors have a wide cultural representation, specifically queer representation.

"We have to make up for lost ground and lost time in the way and the volume that queer people are seen on TV," he says. "We are not going to change the terrible wave of hatred in this country against trans people especially, but also queer people and not the people who are in my minorities of any kind. We're not gonna change that unless we can show them on mainstream television, so that those people who are hateful will not be scared of them anymore."

And he and the producers are turning to "RuPaul Drag Race" alum for representation – on Season Two Peppermint competed; on the upcoming season, it is Bob the Drag Queen. They also have additional queer representation with "Selling Sunset's" Chrishell Stause and, randomly, King Charles' openly gay family member Lord Ivar Mountbatten.

Still, that Peppermint was the first to be eliminated brought questions of closet transphobia amongst the contestants. Though she left herself wide open to be eliminated, the feeling that the mainstream group needed to eliminate the "trans" other appeared to be an unpleasant subtext. Peppermint acknowledged this dynamic during the Season Two reunion show in which she called out the "biases" she said were instrumental in her being falsely accused as a Traitor and axed from the show.

"People have to rely on the biases that they bring into the game, which end up targeting whoever's the most different from the group," Peppermint said. "And in those situations, people like me don't really fare that well."

In a recent interview, Bob the Drag Queen says he prepared for the show by appearing on a podcast with Monet X Change. The manipulation, the lies, the gaslighting, the coercion, the collusion. A contusion! Has prepared me. I'm really proud of my performance on 'The Traitors.'"

"Oh my God, it's the gayest thing ever, reality TV," said Cumming when he heard he was one of three nominees for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program from the queer community. In addition, Kristen Kish from "Top Chef" is nominated.