Alan Cumming Calls X2 a ‘Horrible Experience’ — But Loves His Avengers: Doomsday Return

Alan Cumming has some unfinished business with Nightcrawler — and some long-overdue things to say about what it cost him to play the character the first time around.

In a candid new interview with Deadline, the actor opened up about his experience on the 2003 set of X2, describing conditions that left a mark on him and his castmates that they’ve been talking about, quietly, for more than two decades. “There were things that happened on the [X2] set that were just shocking to me,” Cumming said. “The working environment was very, very wrong and very just unacceptable. And we all have talked about it in various ways over the years.”

Cumming didn’t name director Bryan Singer by name, but the context makes it hard to misread. During X2’s production, cast members reportedly threatened a walkout over Singer’s behavior on set. Singer has faced multiple, well-documented allegations of misconduct throughout his career and has consistently denied wrongdoing. Cumming himself had previously spoken about the “hellish” makeup process — hours in the chair to become the blue-skinned, teleporting mutant — but his latest comments make clear that the makeup chair was only part of why he turned down X-Men: The Last Stand.

A Trauma Bond That Lasted 20 Years

What did come out of that difficult production, unexpectedly, was a group of people who genuinely love each other. Cumming told People last month that the shared ordeal forged bonds that have held strong ever since. “It’s one of those films where I think we all were so traumatized we were bonded in trauma, so we stayed in touch,” he said. He’s remained close with Ian McKellen, Rebecca Romijn, Patrick Stewart, and James Marsden — all of whom, notably, are returning alongside him in Avengers: Doomsday.

That reunion, it turns out, has been genuinely healing. “Going back to it after all these years was great because I really liked the character,” Cumming told Deadline. “To go back and play him now and also this film is like superhero soup. There’s so many of them in it. I just can’t keep up.”

He also had warm words for the Russo brothers, who are directing the film after their celebrated MCU run with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. “I really liked the brothers who directed it, and everyone was so nice.” Principal photography wrapped in September 2025, but Cumming confirmed he still has an additional shoot coming — so Nightcrawler’s role, small as it may be, isn’t entirely locked in yet.

Secret Characters, Fake Names, and Superhero Soup

Here’s where things get interesting for Marvel fans: Cumming let slip that the cast list we know isn’t the whole story. The scripts, he said, were deliberately obscured to keep certain returns under wraps. “Sometimes there were secret names in it because they didn’t want to let out that this certain character was coming back, so they called them somebody else in the script. It was so confusing.”

Given the swirling rumors — Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man among the most frequently cited — Cumming’s confirmation that there are surprises even the scoopers haven’t cracked will keep fans busy until a trailer finally drops. The latest word suggests one could arrive as soon as late May or mid-June.

The confirmed cast alone is already staggering: Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, Anthony Mackie as Captain America, Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, James Marsden as Cyclops, Channing Tatum as Gambit, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Florence Pugh as Yelena, and many more.

As for how much screen time Cumming actually gets amid all of that? He was refreshingly honest. “I’m not in it very much, but I really had fun and it was a really lovely thing to go back to.” He paused on that for a moment, then added something that’s hard not to smile at: “It’s kind of great being a superhero at 60. It’s not so bad.”

Avengers: Doomsday opens December 18, 2026.