I got a call in the post office from my agent in London, going, I want to see you for.
A Bond film.
Oh my god.
And I was like, oh, I'm going to be a Bond girl. And she was like, no, you don't fuck anyone and you don't kill anyone.
You just sing a country in western song.
I was like, great, I'm in, I'm in. And then you were in gold and I too.
That's right. Actually, my god, look what I've got. It's next to me here machine. You're on it. You're on it.
I take it, you bastard. I've seen one of these.
I'm on the fucking pinball machine?
Is it you?
Oh?
There you are? Oh my god, on the pin.
I'm By'm underneath you.
Okay, Alan, I can't even believe it. I don't believe that you have.
The bimber and also do the other thing about that film is that it's a video game. I didn't know about that until years later. And I had an assistant called Landon at the time, and I said, Landon, I'm in a video game. He was like, yeah, I know. If you piss me off, I go home and shoot you in the balls.
Hello, I'm Mini Driver and welcome to the mini questions. I've always loved Pru's questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Prus's questionnaire and adapted What I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the
quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what
makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with. My guest today is Alan Cumming. He is an actor in movies like X Men and in the TV show The Good Wife. He is an author, he has an obe, and he is a podcaster. He's also an articulate, powerful voice in and for the LGBTQ community, and he's been my friend for thirty years. We made the short film together called That Sunday in the early nineties.
It's worth having a dig and finding it if you can, along with the film Circle of Friends and then Gold and Eye. I had a hard time not constantly interrupting and finishing his sentences in this interview, largely because my brain likes to go down the same pathways as Alan's, which is to say, off the main road and deep into glorious woodland. He is a deep and generous soul and has a way of sharing the painful hearts of his past with great compassion and great humor. What relationship,
real or fictionalized, defines love for you? Well?
Is it you and me? In Circle of Friends?
What did I call you?
You? What?
What does it you call me? I can remember, hold on, I can see it.
Some remember said in a bit of the Succulent Bird. But that wasn't ast talking about the chicken eating as I was eluding. But at the end I say something awful to you.
He called me something bitch, and I can't remember what it is.
Yeah, yeah, But back to love. Unconditional love. I think with Grant Schaeffer, my husband upstairs. Not that I've got another one downstairs, but you know what I mean, I.
Was going to say, show me the one in the basement.
I feel I've reached a point with him after so long where it's you know, he pisses me off, but I just feel this completely solid, true thing that I just can't imagine we can get over anything.
Does that define love for you, that notion of.
Solid unconditional love, unconditional love? It, yes, I think, yeah, because I no matter what happens, I'm going to have this love right, no.
Matter the circumstances, the vagaries of the circumstance.
In life exactly. But then, actually, what I would say is more unconditional love is my relationship with dogs. So I've got La La and Jerry upstairs, and I'm very attached to La La and attaching to them both. But you know, I think I'm more of a special relationship with La La. And I had my dog Honey before that. There's a sort of a statue of her over there on a little deck, who was my longest adult relationship.
I mean, Grant has now superseded her, but She was the longest relationship I had, through thick and thin, through terrible things in my life. That was a true, unconditional love. And I talk about her all the time. Actually, she's sort of very pleasant in her life. And then she's in the portrait of me at the Scottish National Portrait Girl. That is she's referenced.
Oh, the one that replaced the queen.
Yes, that replaced the queen.
I love that your portrait replaced the queen.
It brought the queen that the queen was in the blanket over or taken into somebody.
Put the queen down, and they put it.
Another queen up and set your queen. Jokes here. They moved me around the last time. I think I was in between Tilda Swinton and Nanny Lennox. That's a nice sandwich.
Oh my god, that's the best sandwich ever. But wait, but Honey's in that portrait.
Well she's yes, because she died just before I got painted. And the guy was asking me about things. So there's a little jar beside me and it says Honey on it in the picture.
Ashes.
No, no, it's just a jar into the picture. Thought her ashes are upstairs.
I was going to say, was that her ashes that just said honey No, actually was a.
Jar of honey.
Yeah, it's the jar of honey, but it says honey on it and then it says yes, yes, yes, because I was really sad about this Scots independence thing had gone the wrong way.
Yeah.
What was hilarious was I'm wearing this kilt round my neck in the portrait and it was unveiled at the Scots National Portrait Galery in the big you know, main place to take the Queen down, you know, and it's all posh and everyone's having drinks and it's a film tree because they're filming it for that Sky Portrait Artist of the Year thing, and that say a few words. I said, Oh, it's so exciting because this tartan the kill Time wedding, it's the official Tartan of the Yes
campaign for independence. And it was all these clinking of glasses of the old Unionists in the room and it was such such a great thing for me, like to know that in that painting, which he'll be there forever, it's not only his little honey reference, but this subversive little message that I managed to get in. But yes, when I realized she was going to die before me. I remember just thinking, no, you know, Honey's in my life.
She's my sort of girlfriend. And I just remember when someone sort of said some of the reference about her dying and I thought, oh my god, she's a dog. Yes, the dogs die before you. She's going to die. And it was such a weird things. I so thought of her as like a human relationship. How much sort of time I took to think about her and the way she featured in my life and the decisions I had to make because of her was very much like having an actual person.
I totally understand that my big you've.
Got puts his name down on you look at your feet.
Okay, well Bob, Bob's a difficult so and I closes it.
He's not listening. He's a bit deaf. Anyway.
The true great love of my life was my labrador Bubba, who I had for seventeen years.
Oh wow, who died in my arms.
And she was the greatest precursor to having a child, particularly having a son. And there's a lot of similarities, like if anyone wants to have a road test having a.
Baby boy, get a labrador.
Right right.
They just want to be loved rambunctious.
They want to eat, they jump around a lot of need exercise, and you need to go to sleep when they do.
And that's it, right, It's the same protocol.
I always think people should have a dog first when they're thinking about kids.
Exactly.
Remember Rachel wevice. We were chatting. She said to grad do you have children. You went, well, we have two dogs and Bubba. And they had the conversation about dogs for a bit and then he said to her, what about you, And Rachel went, well, I have a human child. I don't bless you for entertaining these two old queers who are just talking about their dogs. And you have to remind us that your child is a humans.
Very respectful to qualify that it was a human child, so as to not denigrate your fur babies.
Yeah, oh, I hate for a babies though. I hate that way.
I hate it.
It's like it's hashtag blessed lives in the same space file.
And also like when the Honey died and people said, oh, you'll meet them in the rainbow know they fucking won't.
Yeah, No, I on a dynamite that ship.
I hate that really me too, It's.
Snow rainbow bridge.
I do sometimes see Bubba when I'm in a soul cycle class, though, like he's running beside me on the stationary bike.
It's really weird.
Wow. But you know, a sort of a fever of sweat, and so it feels exactly cultish.
It's totally cultish.
It's amazing, and I can imagine you're getting into a revere.
It's like it's like being in a really sweaty cult with their motivational speaker at the helm of this ship. And I think you do go into a bit of a trance and then you start seeing your dead dog.
This is my favorite question. What would be your last meal?
I would have still these the stow this. This is an old Scottish thing. I guess it's because it's on the stove. It's like supposed to be when you're drinking. You leave it there and you're going. You have a little some steeves. It's potatoes and onions, meat it. I do a vegan version. It's delicious. It's just like the most carby starchy thing, so delicious. I put guardic and other things, so source and blah blah blah. See I really think I'm a peasant. I really it's so interesting.
I discovered recently I'm part Portuguese. I did that thing you send off. I'm six percent Portuguese.
Oh that's quite a lot, is it.
I had no idea. I'm a little bit sort of German and there was a few percentage of there, but you know, mostly Scottish and north of England.
I'm literally an Anglo Saxon like I basically was either one of the people that the Vikings came and found who already.
Lived here, a bit of picked, a bit of.
I have nothing exotic in me at all, unless i'm you know, drinking tequila. That's the most exotic I get something interesting in me.
Funny. I love that I was a little more saucy than I thought, but mostly you know, white Scottish boy. But the thing was, I'm very much a peasant. I really feel very peasanty, and I know that I am from sort of peasant stock on my father's side of the family too.
Are you utter complete peasants, some of who could play musical instruments and so we're musical peasants.
Musical peasants. I love that. That's a good band we're going.
So you're a peasant, So what does that mean you like eating?
So my dad's family all worked and lived on Codor estate for generations, like on the farms or in the forestry. My dad was a forester. And then what was hilarious is that if you go to Coder Castle you look up on the wall, there's a portrait of me. No, seriously, it looks like me in a period film. It's insane. And when it was open to the public about the nineties summing or whatever, people send me this postcard the
sun said what the hell? And then I thought, wait a minute, maybe there was some dabbling below stay, because I mean, of course that I look so much like that man who was like the first Dail of Cordor or something.
So actually you think that you are an.
Aristocrat of peasant stock. But there was dabbling below stairs. And if I could just get one of the Corridor families DNA chunk of their hair, yeah, and do it, I would be able to prove. But I don't think I want to do that.
Yeah, we need to go to a few more parties and like steal some whiskey.
Glasses would hilarious.
I'm sorry, duchess.
There was always at that thing about remember they were trying to get Prince Hardie's den and the people are trying to steal bits of Prince Hardie's hair.
I felt it was happening in a nightclub.
I think my brother was working the door and some yeah, somebody was trying to sort of snip Harry's hat.
Can you imagine god Pool love?
And I wonder he's gone to California. I mean, seriously, man, quick, get back to the face.
So the food, because of my peasant thing. I love food that is one bowl of the same thing. Like you know, if you have too many different options, I You've got, like you know, alls of vegetables. It's too overwhelming for me. I don't like it. I like to mush them all together. And I like to eat things with a spoon. It's that I love more than anything, the feeling of having the same taste again and again and eating it with a spoon. That's what I would do.
I suppose it's very like like baby foods. It's probably going back to this. It's like there's seven ages of man. But that's what my last meal would be.
Stuve is it's very safe. Then it feels very primal. That and also understandable. Something that is in one ball comforting. It's comforting, do you know what I mean? I get confused in posh restaurants sometimes. I mean I've been undone by like a foam on top of something.
God saved me from foam. It looks it looks like, it looks like fish spit. I can't do it. I agree with you.
I like a bowl and those have become fashionable now. You know there are a menu like a bowl. Would you like the ancient grain bowl?
Yes, that's right, there's the Buddha bowl and things.
Do those make you happy?
Yeah? I like those, and I think I'm more in the Asian thing as well, like I you know, I loved I made a film in Australian. They had Kanji for breakfast, which is like poor edge, and then you put all these things in it. I love. That's my dream.
Oh God, that is delicious. I like pokey balls in.
A like in Hawaii a pokey board.
Yes, yes, I lived there for a while and I ate a lot of what did we in Hawaiian?
Oh? I left Hollywood. I left Hollywood.
I hated it and nobody noticed I'd left because I all like I'd like two films come out the year that I went and lived in Hawaii.
It was quite funny.
I went there just to write music and to surf and to live on the beach and hang out.
Gosh, I made a film there, that Tempest film that Julia Timore Helen Mirrin was was prospero prospera, and we were it was just so hilarious, like being in the hot tub with like Chris Cooper and David Strath there and Tom Knti and Russell Brand and you know, practicing our lines for the next day in the hot tub of the Four Seasons and in that funny little island camera. Quite a long time, I went back and forward a bit, such a Huto.
Love, Okay, what question would you most like? Answered?
Ugh?
I mean, I think it would have to be what was wrong with my father? What it was the true mental diagnosis of him? You know, I think I think maybe ten years ago and said why did my father
not love me? And I've got over that one, you know, as I found out all this evidence about him, you know, I came to the conclusion not just like, oh he's insane and awful, but he's just was mentally ill and I would love to get proper diagnosis, and I never will because I was I can't examine him or have anyone examine him, But that, to me is something I would really love to have answered, just what it actually was that made him behave the way he did.
Do you think that if a person can give something a name it can be understood better, does it stay nebulous and therefore threatening if you can't contain it with the world.
I think it's just a thing of it takes outside of your experience. It makes it something that exists in the world that wasn't just about you, you know, So perhaps that is what you're saying. And I've talked to
psychiatrists about this, you know. I have actually spent quite a lot of time trying to diagnose my father from beyond the great personality disorders that he clearly had, but there's more, and I just I don't know quite why and when, you know, and what kicked it in And because something that was such a big part of my life,
that is kind of a mystery. And I've definitely made peace of that, and I understand truly that he was mentally ill, and I've made it easier to to come to terms with and to forgive, and to sort of not too much to forgive. That was easy, but to sort of place what happened to me in a context that I can get myself out of it. But obviously it's I'm never going to have a proper answer, So that would be the thing I would like the answer to.
Yeah, I'm sorry, you won't have the answer to that question.
I hope that the exploration or the interrogation of what it might be.
I hope that there were enough people that said the same thing that I've given you a good idea of what it might have been.
Definitely, there's you know, narcissistic disorder, of psychotic personality, there's there's all these things. But you know, you can't really do that just on one person's memory. You have to get in a bit deeper. So it's so interesting to me. I always I'm really fascinated by the various sort of little psychological quirks we all have. I agree, And I think that's maybe because you know, from such an early age, I was so aware of it. I was so aware
of them. I was aware that my dad was not right right from I'm not right as in wrong as well as being not right psychologically, I had a very good sort of balance between my mum and my dad, so I knew that both couldn't be right. And also, I you know, hate to say it, but I think that's also why I'm quite a good actor, is that I can understand get into sort of people's psychological quirks because I'm aware of the difference. You know, I see it. So yeah, I was used to looking for.
What person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Again, I'm going to see my father. I know I keep sort of bringing it back there, but.
No, no, no, it's good because you wrote a book about your experiences with your father. And someone very early on said to me when I'd not drawing a comparison between an abusive childhood and heartbreak, but I was suffering jemry from a heartbreak and I wrote a record, and a musician that I love said, oh, yeah, you know, wherever possible,
you should profit off your pain. Whatever that well is of you, of your father, that he would be the question that you would want answered that it's the person who altered or affected your life so much.
They are connected those questions for you.
So yeah, exactly, and Also it's sort of you know, in positive ways as well. I mean, like, what's really had been fascinating is right after we made Circle of Friends, actually, I had this nervous breakdown. I remember it was basically because I realized, oh, I'm this person. I'm Alan ahaha, happy Alan, not terribly different from how I am now. I mean into this on the surface, but I was a construct of something my father had done that I'd
not remembered. So I thought, I've become this person by ignoring, you know, suppressing this whole side of these things that happened to me. I don't want to be this person anymore. I want to embrace this terrible thing's happened to me to become the person I'm supposed to be. So that was a huge thing he influenced me. He got completely changed my life. And then when he told me I
wasn't his son, that was pretty huge. And then the ability to go back and talk to him and tell him I was indeed his son after I got the
Dana test and everything. You know, things like that are monumental moments that really change you in terms of like I stood up to this scariest possible monster, I could stand up to I'm now fearless, and then writing about it and realizing that actually how important it is and how many people's lives I changed by telling my story and helped them to be able to deal with things in their life. I had no idea that would happen.
That was such a shocker to me. And then also to realize that by doing that, I have brought my father back into my life in a way that he never was before. So I didn't push him away like I thought. I actually brought him in. But as you say, it's on my terms. So it's been a series of things like that has really truly primarily changed me, and
all of them actually are positive things. I mean, the actual stuff before you know, the childhood was awful, but actually as an adult, the huge, sort of cataclysmic things that happened were ultimately very very positive things for me because it was about becoming my true, authentic self and not a construct of something he had made me.
Oh Johnnie is so articular.
Oh bless you.
I mean, I'm sorry those things happen to you, But it sort of feeds into the last question that I have. It's very revealing in your life can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster.
Well, yes, me, this my entire body.
Definitely me I grew out.
A personal Yeah. I mean I think I would say several relationships that are broken up, like a marriage, a couple of marriages, you know, sort of thing that were when I was in them would definitely be described as personal disasters when they were breaking up, and just the sort of the sort of ugliness of all that. But actually, you know, getting older and looking back on things and seeing the patterns, you notice the patterns of behavior of
yours as well as other people's. That gives you an opportunity to make a decision about are you going to behave differently now in this when this happens, or you know, are you going to make the same mistake or maybe this is a good pattern to repeat. That to me is really fascinating. But there's definitely a couple of relationships that I've had ended with a personal disaster and beautiful things came out. But like I think about talking circle of friends, and I like saph On, a nice relationship
is such a beautiful, strong, loving friendship. I really feel that I, you know, and she knows this too, that we would be there for each other till we die. You know, we were together as a couple for a couple of years and that didn't work out. It worked out for a while, but then it didn't and actually, something so much better has come out of it. So there's a couple of people in my life that I feel like that about. It's kind of funny that I quite a lot of my very close friends have been
my lovers. Really yeah, quite a lot. Yeah, too many actually when you think about it. But I mean not in the same way like with Safa, was like we were in a proper relationship together. But you know, several of my friends more in the gay world, several of my male friends I've had sexcellent at some point in the past, you know, first and then we stayed friends. And I think that's really good. I think it's really good.
I think it's lovely. I think it's lovely. I think it's quite unusual.
I can count on one hand the people that have been lovers that are friends.
Yeah, it's tricky, it's I think it's I think it is easier in the same sex relationship, actually, do you why? Yeah, Because I think sex is easier in general, actually in the same sex relationship to you, Yes, because you understand the person.
Like ergonomically or spiritually.
Spiritually I mean, yeah, well I sort of both. Because you are the same gender as that person, you automatically understand more things about how that person works, thinks and feels, thinks and feels. And also, I think there and therefore you can be more honest with that person. There's not such a barrier of a gender. And also, you know, men and women are fed so much shit that makes it more difficult for them to communicate.
That is so true.
You know, it's like we are raised on a completely and utterly different social, psychic and mental food.
Yeah, and impossible to keep up standards. And so anyway, I think it's easier to be honest with the person of your own sex, and it's easier to move on from sex with a person of your own sex as well,
I do. I mean that's well, look at lesbians. It's like a joke, But when you see a group of friends who are lesbians, they've all slept each other at some point, they're all great friends, and they're all godmothers to their children's I think it's it's that's the case in point, that you can move on from and still keep a loving thing, whereas with men and women it's over and that's it. Many years later you can come
back as the sort of thing. But I don't think there's the same sort of illusion into great friendship that that can happen in the same sex relationship. Sadly, sadly, Oh God, I could talk to you for like ninety nine.
I'm going to have to come as soon as we're all allowed. I'm going to come and find you in your remote location.
I'd glad you to come here.
My god. I will come. I'll bring I'll come. I'll come and play some music. If you got a piano, I'll bring my guitar.
Yeah, oh we've got it all. This has been fun. Thanks many. I've really enjoyed this.
I'm really fascinated and so grateful. You've just shared your heart and your life so generously.
Thank you, dar my pleasure very much. All right, let's love to you.
In closing, I would like to make you aware of some projects that Alan has coming up. I think my particular favorite is a six part podcast series for Audible about a sperm bank heist that he produced and directed called Hot White Heist, starring Saturday Night Lives, Bow and Yang, along with an ensemble of amazing people including Cynthia Nixon,
Abby Jacobson, Jane Lynch and Margaret Show. He also has a show for Apple TV coming in July called Schmigadoon and another show for HBMX also coming in July called The Prince. He is the busiest men in show business, quite rightly. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Minidre, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by a Mini Driver, Additional music
by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me and Mangesh Hettikadour. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison, O'Day, Lisa Castella and Annik Oppenheim, a w kPr, Dala Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg. And constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver