Death, Sex & Money - Why Alan Cumming Doesn't Do Drama
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3.9 ā¢ 1.1K Ratings
šļø 1 December 2021
ā±ļø 27 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
The Scottish actor and I talk about body image, celebrating aging, why he isn't in a monogamousĀ marriage, andĀ the joys of taking ecstasy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What I'm trying to do is to normalise being a hot mess. |
| 0:03.8 | Even if you're successful and doing all these things and, you know, yes, that's my life. |
| 0:09.1 | But I still cry in the shower, you know, sometimes. |
| 0:11.9 | So I think realizing that you can still have a happy life, even though you've got some darkness in you, I think that's the way to go. |
| 0:21.9 | This is death, sex, and money. |
| 0:25.6 | The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. |
| 0:32.9 | I'm Anna Sale. Manasale. |
| 0:43.4 | You know Alan Cumming. |
| 0:48.5 | Depending on how old you are, you might remember the Scottish actor as Eli Gold on the Good Wife or the Pee-Wee-Herman-esque TV host in the Spy Kids movies, or the MC in Cabaret. |
| 0:55.7 | Welcome, welcome. |
| 1:03.6 | Alan is 56 now, and he's just written a memoir called Baggage, Tales from a Fully Packed Life. |
| 1:12.7 | It begins around the time that he first performed that role in cabaret in the mid-1990s, |
| 1:17.9 | as his career was taking off and he was figuring out his public identity. |
| 1:23.2 | I was in Hollywood. I was making a couple of big films there. |
| 1:34.7 | And I found these pair of glasses on a sunglasses stall at Venice Beach. |
| 1:37.6 | And they were just round black glasses. |
| 1:41.9 | And they didn't have any, you know, they didn't have black sunglasses stuff in them. |
| 1:42.6 | It was just clear. |
| 2:00.9 | And I thought these were the greatest frames for me. And I write about in the book about how there's a play by Terrence McNally about Maria Callas. And she says, everyone must have a look. And she's doing this lecture and she looks at this person. And the audience goes, you do not have a look. And I think it's, that became my look. Because it's a look that really suits me. And I bought them and I thought, I'm going to make these my prescription glasses. |
| 2:06.1 | And I went to Australia and I got the lenses put into the frames in a little optometrist in Melbourne. |
| 2:13.8 | And the lady was, that's where my favourite Australian saying came about, she, I said, are you able to do this? |
| 2:19.7 | You know, I've got these sunglasses and can you put my prescriptions in? And I'm only here until Friday. Can you do that? And she went, shouldn't be a drama. And I just love it because it shouldn't be a drama. You know what I mean? It was, it was just that great, absolutely sort of, you know, |
... |
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