‘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
Alan Cumming has admitted that he “didn’t fully understand” the plot of Avengers: Doomsday while filming his scenes returning as the X-Men character Nightcrawler. The revelation is the latest in a series of behind-the-scenes disclosures the Traitors host has made about his experience on Marvel’s set.
According to Cumming, one of his scenes required him to lie directly on top of Florence Pugh’s Black Widow—one of the few instances where he had direct physical contact with fellow cast members. This limited interaction reflected broader production challenges on the film. The actor previously disclosed that most of his Nightcrawler scenes were shot in isolation against blue screen, and he often didn’t know which other actors he was supposed to be interacting with during these sequences.
Despite these production constraints, Cumming’s role includes action sequences, including a fight scene with Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards. His experiences highlight the challenges of modern blockbuster filmmaking, where actors frequently work in isolation against digital backgrounds rather than with scene partners, making it difficult to understand the full narrative context and their character’s place within the larger story.