Alan Cumming: ‘The Traitors castle is a very strange place’-Kitty Chrisp-Entertainment – Metro

Alan Cumming hosts the US Traitors – and just received an Emmy for his work (Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert/Peacock/Euan Cherry)

Scotland is rich with history, ghostly tales and isolated castles, but Perthshire-born Alan Cumming was struck by how ‘strange’ The Traitors castle is.

No, Ardross Castle is not creepy, the 59-year-old actor assures Metro.co.uk – but that that could be because when he’s there hosting the US version of the BBC hit show – also filmed here – there is a buzz of people which could hide anything hair-raising.

‘If I was in it at night on my own, I suppose it might be different,’ he says. ‘But it’s also a set, because a lot of the walls are built out due to all the secret cameras and everything.’

Alan – who just won an Emmy for hosting the hit reality competition – actually really likes the 19th century castle. But it is peculiar.

‘There’s lots of derelict rooms. It’s kind of a strange, half finished place, and then we come in and tart it all up and make it all weird with all the cameras and everything.

‘So it’s a fascinating place, and it’s got great history. It was actually once owned by the people who did Lea and Perrins sauce.’

He admitted the castle is a strange place (Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert/Peacock/Euan Cherry)

Not creepy or haunted – but just strange, with lots of derelict rooms in contrast to the set they’ve created for the show (Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert/Peacock/Euan Cherry)

Aside from the Traitors lurking in the night ready to – not actually – kill off the Faithful opponents and banish them from the show, Alan doesn’t think there’s anything supernatural going on in the Inverness castle. He would be the first one to sniff out such a thing if there was.

‘I sort of feel like energy. Not like ghosts, like people with a sheet on and things like that, but when you go into a place and you feel the energy of something, I definitely believe in all that,’ he says.

‘Even when you walk into a room, sometimes you pick up on energy. I think that’s what I would think of as ghosts – as a sort of the energy left behind by people.

‘In my house in Scotland I felt that, and the house is built in the 1700s so there’s a lot of history and energy in that place.’   

Alan lives between New York and Scotland and his latest work has taken him to the skies above the iconic West Highland Way, as he is narrating Uber’s new seaplane experience.

‘It will be a bit weird to go on and hear myself explaining things,’ Alan says, as he will technically be giving himself a guided tour of his home country when he tests out the journey.

Perhaps most famously, Alan took to the winding Scottish roads with legend of all legends Miriam Margolyes, which made for both a tear-jerking and eye-wateringly funny travel TV show in Alan and Miriam: Lost in Scotland and Beyond.

Alan recently enjoyed adventuring through Scotland with none other than Miriam Margolyes – and his dog Lala (Picture: Channel 4)

The actor lives in New York, but has a house in Scotland which he says has a weird energy about it (Picture: Rich Polk/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)

‘What you see is what you get with Miriam,’ Alan says. ‘She’s hilarious, naughty, but she’s also kind and sweet as well. She wears herself on her sleeve. So I mean, I think that she’s everything you’d hope and more, in real life, she’s really a darling.’

She’d also be possibly the best UK Traitors celebrity contestant of all time, I offer, as this spin-off show is currently in the works.

‘She’d be hilarious,’ agreed Alan, whose celebrity suggestions aren’t really possible – unless Ardoss Castle was indeed haunted.

‘The people I was just thinking of are all dead actually, so we can’t have them. That’d be bad,’ he jokes.

Noele Gordon was the first celeb who sprang to Alan’s mind – but she’s been dead for almost 50 years. No, that wouldn’t make very good television, I silently agree.

‘I’m never really good at celebrities,’ Alan admits. ‘Maybe… I don’t know… Delia Smith. Is Delia still with us?’

Delia is still with us.

As he approaches 60, Alan is very much still with us too. While some people think of him as a scatty person, he’s not really. Juggling so many projects takes a certain amount of organisation, thank you very much.

‘I’m always fascinated when people do impersonations of me and I’m like a little elf or something,’ he says.

Alan has a certain youthfulness about him, I point out.

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‘Physically, I exercise, I go to the gym, I do yoga, swim, I do stuff like that. I’m vegan, and, you know, take a tonne of vitamins. I do all those sorts of things,’ he says.

‘But I think it’s more sort of a spiritual thing. I’m still curious. I think that’s the thing. I think when people get older, they often become less curious about life, and therefore get boring. That keeps you feeling young, even though you’re not.’

If he were to meet that little boy growing up in Scotland, Alan would tell him not to be afraid to be himself.

‘Stop always trying to be perfect or pretending to be perfect, and actually I think you realise that your imperfections are the things that make you interesting and different,’ Alan says.

‘So I think that’s what I tell my younger self: don’t be afraid to show yourself.’

Alan Cumming is narrating the Uber Seaplane, where customers can take to the skies in a private plane over the Scottish Highlands. Book now at uberseaplanescotland.co.uk for flights taking place from the 21st-23rd September.

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