Alan Cumming Admits He Has No Idea What Happens in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

Marvel’s obsession with secrecy is legendary, but few stars have been as refreshingly candid about it as Alan Cumming, whose latest ‘Avengers: Doomsday‘ confession has fans laughing. The 61-year-old actor is returning as Nightcrawler, a role he first played in 2003’s ‘X2: X-Men United’. He didn’t appear in any other ‘X-Men’ film after that, making ‘Doomsday’ his first chance to play the character in 23 years.

He’s also far from alone in the reunion. Cumming reprises the teleporting mutant alongside fellow ‘X-Men’ veterans Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Rebecca Romijn and James Marsden. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, the film is expected to bring heroes from 3 universes together to face an existential threat.

Now, in an interview with SiriusXM, Cumming revealed that he doesn’t fully understand the movie’s plot, a confession that drew laughs from the hosts. Variety shared the comments on X, and the story quickly spread across entertainment outlets.

Part of the confusion comes down to Marvel’s infamous spoiler protection. The studio withheld a complete script from Cumming during filming, leaving him with little sense of the bigger picture.

He illustrated the point with a funny on-set story. During one of the rare scenes shot on the backlot instead of in front of a blue screen, a crew member began explaining what was happening with giant robots, but Cumming politely cut him off, asking to simply be told where to point. As far as he was concerned, his job boiled down to running around.

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The most amusing detail involved his co-star. Cumming’s Nightcrawler mostly plays opposite Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, yet the 2 actors were never on set at the same time. Instead, Cumming filmed largely with Pugh’s body double, and the same was true for Pugh.

He shared that when he finally met her at the Emmys, he joked that they had never met even though she had lain on top of him, or at least her double had, and Pugh laughed back that the same was true for her, since she’d lain on top of his double.

Pugh returns as Yelena after debuting in ‘Black Widow’ and later starring in ‘Thunderbolts*’. Their characters reportedly clash in a fight scene at the X-Mansion, though they’re not expected to interact much beyond that.

This isn’t the first time Cumming has pulled back the curtain on his Marvel experience. Similar to his story about Pugh, he has also shared that he never actually met Pedro Pascal while filming Nightcrawler’s fight with Reed Richards.

His openness has made him a fan favorite among Marvel followers, many of whom find his honesty a welcome break from the usual tight-lipped press tours. One outlet even joked that ‘Doomsday’ increasingly seems like something he did just for the stories.

The interview came during a banner stretch for the actor. At the Emmys, he won Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program for ‘The Traitors’, and he was speaking to SiriusXM while promoting ‘The Traitors: New Blood’.

That success on television, combined with his long-awaited Marvel return, makes this one of the busiest periods of Cumming’s career. Whether or not he understands every twist, fans are thrilled to see Nightcrawler back in action.

Cumming’s comments only add to the anticipation for Marvel’s next massive team-up. With Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom at the center, the film brings together the Avengers, the X-Men, and more for one of the studio’s biggest crossovers yet. ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ opens in theaters on December 18, and audiences will finally get to see what Nightcrawler has been running around for.

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