'I Don't Fully Understand the Plot': Alan Cumming Can't Explain Avengers: Doomsday, But Reveals He Was Required to Lie On Top of Florence Pugh's Black Widow
· IGN
X-Men star Alan Cumming has admitted he "didn't fully understand" the plot of Avengers: Doomsday while filming his scenes — one of which involved getting close to Florence Pugh's Black Widow.
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If this latest tidbit from the Traitors host sounds familiar, it's because Cumming has leaked snippets about his time on Marvel's set previously — lamenting that his returning character Nightcrawler was filmed mostly against blue screen, and noting that he had got to fight Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards.
Now, Cumming has told SiriusXM (via Variety) that he did have bits of Doomsday's story explained to him — only for him to respond that he didn't really need to know the plot as he was simply there to "run around."
Cumming also revealed that he had to, at one point, lie on top of Florence Pugh's Black Widow character — even though it was her stunt double that he actually laid upon.
"There was a bit when we were shooting a scene, and it was one of the rare scenes when I was actually on the backlot and not in front of a blue screen," Cumming began. "And this man came and said, 'So right now Alan, these giant robots are blah blah,' and 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'."
The "giant robots" that Cumming refers to are undoubtedly the Sentinels we see Doctor Doom bringing to life in Doomsday's recent trailer, which seem to be the Avengers' first fight alongside the X-Men, and Doom's first big showdown with our heroes. How long does Nightcrawler survive? Cumming has not discussed being in any other part of the movie so far, but perhaps he knows to keep quiet about anything particularly spoilery? Or, perhaps not.
Avengers: Doomsday will see the return of numerous X-Men actors from 20th Century Fox's older mutant movies. Cumming is expected to share screen time with Patrick Stewart's Professor X, Kelsey Grammer's Beast, James Marsden's Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn's Mystique, Ian McKellen's Magneto — and potentially other cast members that Cumming is yet to tease.
Following the events of Avengers: Doomsday and the subsequent Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel boss Kevin Feige has said that a semi-rebooted timeline will see a new, younger X-Men team come to the fore, in a fresh X-Men movie set to be directed by Thunderbolts*/The New Avengers' Jake Schreier, and starring Sadie Sink's newly-introduced Jean Grey.
"I saw Florence Pugh yesterday at the Emmys," Cumming continued. "And I said, 'Gosh, it's so funny. I've never met you, but you lay on top of me, or your body double did.' And she goes, 'Yeah I lay on top of you as well, but it was your body double.'"
Presumably this is part of the same Sentinels fight scene, and both Pugh and Cumming end up taking shelter together, rather than anything more salacious going on. But who knows! (Probably not Alan Cumming.) We'll just have to find out ourselves when Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18.
Image credit: Chloe Kern/WireImage.