Alan Cumming Says He Kept in Touch with “X2 ”Costars Over the Last 20 Years Since They Were 'Bonded in Trauma' (Exclusive)
Alan Cumming Says He Kept in Touch with “X2 ”Costars Over the Last 20 Years Since They Were 'Bonded in Trauma' (Exclusive)
Meredith Wilshere, Brendan LeSun, May 3, 2026 at 10:28 PM UTC
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Alan Cumming in X2Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock -
Alan Cumming says filming X2 was "miserable" but helped bond the cast, many of whom he remains close with
When talking with PEOPLE at the TriBeCa Ball in New York City, he shares that the cast is "bonded in trauma"
Avengers: Doomsday, featuring returning X-Men actors, is set to release in theaters on Dec. 18, 2026
Alan Cumming has kept in touch with his X2 castmates despite their traumatic on-set experience.
At the TriBeCa Ball at the New York Academy of Art on April 20, Cumming opens up to PEOPLE about reprising his role as Nightcrawler from the X-Men movie for Avengers: Doomsday.
When asked what it was like to reconnect with past cast members, the Emmy winner notes that he has actually remained in contact with several of them over the last 20 years.
“The ones that I did reunite with, I've seen them since,” he tells PEOPLE.
Alan Cumming at Time 100Credit: Taylor Hill/WireImage
“I also didn't reunite with that many because we did it all sort of separately; it was a bit of a modern way of doing things," he says. "I'm very chummy with Ian [McKellan], I've seen Rebecca [Romijn] over the years. Patrick [Stewart], I've seen quite a lot. Jimmy [Marsden], I've seen a lot of them actually."
"It's one of those films where I think we all were so traumatized we were bonded in trauma, so we stayed in touch,” Cumming adds.
Last year, Marvel announced that Cumming was one of the actors reprising their roles in the forthcoming Avengers film, which is set to arrive in theaters in December 2026, over two decades after Cumming's first appearance as the mutant in 2003's X2.
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Recently, Cumming told PEOPLE at the TIME100 Gala that it was “really lovely to go back to something all those years later that I never thought I was going to go back to and I actually think, 'Oh, I really enjoyed playing this character.' "
"It was really nice. And the people who made it, the brothers, are really lovely and very conscious of making sure everyone on set feels valued and what more could you ask for," he added.
Halle Berry and Alan Cumming in 'X2'Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock
While speaking with PEOPLE before a panel for The Traitors at the Televerse 2025 conference last year, however, the actor noted that his experience filming the first superhero film was much different. Cumming said filming Doomsday "was amazing" and, "in a sort of ooey, gooey way, it was really healing and really nice to go back to something that it was a terrible experience when I did it the first time."
The Traitors host emphasized that he was "miserable" making X2, which was "awful for a variety of reasons that I have talked about at length" — such as having to spend up to five hours in the makeup chair and difficulties working with director Bryan Singer.
The returning Doomsday cast is set to include the likes of Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Paul Rudd, Tom Hiddleston and Simu Liu, as well as Cumming, Romijn and Kelsey Grammer, who costarred with Stewart, McKellen and Marsden in the X-Men movies released in the 2000s and 2010s.
Avengers: Doomsday is in theaters Dec. 18, 2026.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
