Spoilers forward for the primary three episodes of The Traitors season 3.
Alan Cumming is sick, twisted, and must be psychiatrically evaluated.” That’s the evaluation of 1 contestant upon studying of a devious new twist in season three of The Traitors, the primary three episodes of which at the moment are streaming on Peacock.
But does the host in query agree? “That might be true of the Alan Cumming character on The Traitors, in terms of what he puts those poor people through,” the true Cumming says throughout a go to to Vanity Fair’s workplace. “Sometimes we do a mission, I obviously know what they are. [Producers] talked me through. But when we actually come to do it, I think, ‘Oh, my God. Did I make these people do that?’ The last one in this season is so insane and terrifying.”
Cumming’s campy, tartan-covered host, whose frequent crooning of the phrase “murrrrder” has turn into the present’s unofficial tagline, helped make The Traitors appointment viewing, and a two-time Emmy winner. Last yr, Cumming personally gained Emmys each for internet hosting and producing the sequence, upsetting Drag Race and breaking RuPaul’s eight-year profitable streak as host.
The present returns to its sprawling Scottish citadel with its requisite melting pot of actuality stars—hailing from The Bachelor, Bravo, Survivor, Big Brother, and, this season, even a queer British royal. New twists abound, together with the late arrivals of previously-unannounced solid members Wes Bergmann of The Challenge (and, extra not too long ago, House of Villains), in addition to Big Brother’s Derrick Levasseur, who enter as Faithfuls. Meanwhile, Rob Mariano of Survivor and Deal or No Deal Island takes his place as a Traitor among the many beforehand tapped Bob The Drag Queen from Drag Race, Survivor’s Carolyn Wiger, and Big Brother’s Danielle Reyes.
The Traitors’ core premise stays: A bunch of Faithfuls workforce as much as banish the treacherous, murdering Traitors amongst them in pursuit of a $250,000 money prize. By the top of the primary three episodes, the Real Housewives faction has been focused, with Dorinda Medley of New York City and Chanel Ayan of Dubai as first homicide victims. Meanwhile, Bachelor in Paradise host Wells Adams and Survivor’s Tony Vlachos, each Faithfuls, have been banished on the roundtable, leaving the Traitors untouched by elimination.
“There’s so many psychological layers to this that just keep revealing themselves,” says the 59-year-old Cumming. “It’s maddening. It’s almost like they’re drugged. They take a Traitor’s potion. And then there’s me, just encouraging it all, and cajoling them. Also laughing at them as well—like, a lot.”
The Tony-winning Scot, greatest recognized for his performances in Broadway’s Cabaret, TV’s The Good Wife, and the cult-classic movie Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, has taken to being “Stern Daddy” with the contestants. “I’m always telling them to be quiet,” Cumming tells VF. “I make it all, ‘This is the roundtable. This is hallowed ground,’ things like that, just to get them to shut up.”
Cumming has infused elements of himself into the efficiency, together with his precise pet Lala as a Bond villain-esque lapdog. Still, he maintains a veil of separation between himself and the present’s solid. “I used to sometimes cross paths with them in the mornings arriving at the castle, and I don’t do that anymore,” he says. “It’s really important I have no connection with them at all unless I’m in character as this weirdo.”