Alan Cumming says Stanley Kubrick restored his faith in cinema 25 years ago – and has made life difficult for other directors ever since

Attention, filmmakers: If Alan Cumming starred in your film at any point in the 21st century, you can thank Stanley Kubrick. And if at any point Cumming seemed annoyed with you, you can blame Kubrick.

At least that’s what Cumming said. In an interview with TheWrap about “The Traitors,” the Peacock reality show for which he was nominated for an Emmy, Cumming enthusiastically launched into a discussion about his appearance in “Eyes Wide Shut,” Kubrick’s final film, released in July 1999, 25 years ago this summer.

“It was very memorable,” Cumming said of the experience, which both restored his interest in filmmaking at a time when he was losing it and made him question the way other filmmakers have directed it since.

It must be said that Cumming doesn’t really have a role in the film, a perverse, dreamlike reverie in which Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play a married couple whose relationship deteriorates as Cruise’s character, a doctor, wanders New York and slips into a mysterious underworld of ritual orgies led by masked celebrants. Cumming appears in a three-minute scene as a hotel clerk who tells Cruise that the man he’s looking for has already settled his score; the Scottish actor, who was 34 when the film was released, counters Cruise’s steely gaze with seductive tics and knowing glances.

At the time, Cumming was a British stage actor best known for his portrayal of the emcee in Sam Mendes’s revival of “Cabaret” in London’s West End and then on Broadway, where he won a Tony Award. He had appeared in a few Hollywood films — the James Bond film “GoldenEye,” “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” the Spice Girls’ “Spice World” — but he had no desire to pursue a career on the silver screen.

“I had done a few movies in Hollywood and a few big movies in Europe,” he said. “I was kind of new to the scene, but I was disillusioned with acting. I was just wondering: Is this over? Am I really going to be happy doing these big movies? I didn’t really feel challenged.”

But when he got the chance to send in an audition tape for Eyes Wide Shut, he didn’t pass up the opportunity to work with the director of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Cumming’s agents told him that Kubrick might need him next week or not for three months. “I thought it was going to be Stanley’s last film,” he said, “so I decided to take a little rest and wait until they needed me.”

He returned to the United States to work on another film. To kill time while waiting for Kubrick’s film to be ready, he decided to have a little fun. “I had a really loud time,” he said with a smile. “I partied for a few months and ended up writing a novel (called “Tommy’s Tale: A Novel of Sex, Confusion, and Happy Endings”) based on that period.”

He was then called to London for the filming of Eyes Wide Shut, which was set in New York but filmed in the UK. Once there, Cumming quickly learned to act with the legendary Kubrick. “Everybody described him as a big scary monster,” he said. “And if you give that energy to someone, they’ll give it back to you. But I stood up to him, actually.”

“Within seconds of meeting him, he said to me” – and here Cumming began imitating Kubrick’s gruff New York voice – “You’re not AmericanAnd I said, “I know. I’m Scottish.” He said, “You were American on the tape!” And I just said, “Yeah, that’s because I’m Scottish.” actorStanley.” He just said, “Ooh.”

“And after that, we got along great,” Cumming laughs. “He wasn’t a bully, but I can understand how he might feel like a bully if you gave him bully energy. And what I gave him was like, ‘Don’t bother me, Stanley Kubrick. I’ve been waiting six months to do this little part.’” Another laugh. “That’s basically what I was saying.”

By that point, “Eyes Wide Shut” had been filming for a year and was on track to set a record for the longest continuous shoot, at 400 days. Once they started filming Cumming’s brief conversation with Cruise, he realized why it was taking so long.

“It took a week to do that little scene,” he said. week. If you did it now, you probably would have gone home by lunchtime. But it really rekindled my interest in acting because every time we did a take, I knew exactly why. He was really focused on the little moments or even the little gestures. The detail and the complexity made me think that acting can be really fun.

“He was so invested in every little detail that you were, too. And at the end of the week, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, let me get out of here.’ He actually wanted me to stay and do more activities, and I would have stayed, but I couldn’t. He reluctantly let me go, and we stayed in touch afterward.”

But Cumming was right when he said that “Eyes Wide Shut” was Kubrick’s last film: The director died in March 1999, six days after showing the final cut to Warner Bros. Since then, Cumming says he has often had reason to think about that experience.

“Now when I make a movie or something and the director says, ‘Oh, that was perfect, let’s do one more,’ I think, A) Why do one more if it was perfect? ​​And B) You’re not going to do it. say something? You’re not going to say Why shall we do it again?

“Other people would say, ‘Oh, try another one.’ Stanley would say, ‘OK, look at the screen here and watch the way your lips move there. When you say this word, look this way…’ Every time you did a take, you were so excited trying to get it right for him.”

An interview with Alan Cumming about “The Traitors” will appear in TheWrap’s awards issue, Down to the Wire: Comedy.