Alan Cumming and his X2 castmates are “bonded by trauma”.
Alan Cumming feels a ‘bond’ with his X2 castmates
The 61-year-old actor will reprise his role as Nightcrawler in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday blockbuster, and he revealed he has stayed in touch with a lot of his castmates from Bryan Singer’s 2003 comic book movie, and he was able to reconnect with some of them on the new film.
Speaking to PEOPLE magazine, he said: “The ones that I did reunite with, I’ve seen them since.
“I also didn’t reunite with that many because we did it all sort of separately; it was a bit of a modern way of doing things.
“I’m very chummy with Ian [McKellan], I’ve seen Rebecca [Romijn] over the years. Patrick [Stewart], I’ve seen quite a lot. Jimmy [James Marsden], I’ve seen a lot of them actually.”
“It’s one of those films where I think we all were so traumatized we were bonded in trauma, so we stayed in touch.”
Cumming recently admitted to the same outlet that it was “really lovely to go back to something all those years later that I never thought I was going to go back to”.
Despite the on set struggles at the time, the experience of revisiting the character has been “really nice”.
Cumming explained: “I actually think, ‘Oh, I really enjoyed playing this character.’ It was really nice.
“And the people who made it, the brothers, are really lovely and very conscious of making sure everyone on set feels valued and what more could you ask for?”
It’s a far cry from his time as Nightcrawler in X2, which was a “miserable” experience and “awful for a variety of reasons that I have talked about at length”.
While that original stint was marred by difficulties working with Singer and spending up to five hours in a makeup chair to create his character’s distinct look, working on Doomsday was an “amazing” time.
Speaking to PEOPLE again last year, he said: “In a sort of ooey, gooey way, it was really healing and really nice to go back to something that it was a terrible experience when I did it the first time.”
Kelsey Grammer, Cumming and Rimijn appeared with the likes of McKellen, Marsden and Stewart in the X-Men movies back in the 2000s and 2010s.
They will be part of Avengers: Doomsday later this year, alongside a returning MCU cast featuring the likes of Anthony Mackie, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Rudd, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Channing Tatum, Danny Ramirez and Simu Liu.
Meanwhile, Robert Downey Jr. will be back in the franchise although he will be changing roles and playing Doctor Doom, having previously portraying Tony Stark and his alter ego Iron Man.
Avengers: Doomsday will be released on December 18, 2026.