Actor Alan Cumming plays Nightcrawler in Avengers: Doomsday, but he told SiriusXM that the Avengers: Doomsday plot is not entirely clear to him. “To be honest, I don’t fully understand the plot,” Cumming said, and Variety reports that Marvel did not let him read the full screenplay.
Just Tell Me Where To Point
Filming his own scenes did not clear things up either. Cumming recalled a crew member trying to explain one of them to him.
“There was a bit when we were shooting a scene, and it was one of the rare scenes when I was actually on the backlot and not in front of a blue screen,” Cumming said. “And this man came and said, ‘So right now Alan, these giant robots are blah blah,’ and started to tell me the thing, and I was like, ‘You know what, thank you so much, but just tell me where I point my, whatever I point. And I’ll do that. Really, I just know I’m here to run around.'”
He Never Met Florence Pugh On Set
Cumming also said he had never met Florence Pugh, who plays Yelena Belova, until he saw her at the Emmys, even though the two share a scene in which she lies on top of him. Each of them shot it with the other’s body double.
“And I saw Florence Pugh yesterday at the Emmys,” he said. “And I said, ‘Gosh, it’s so funny. I’ve never met you, but you lay on top of me, or your body double did.’ And she goes, ‘Yeah I lay on top of you as well, but it was your body double.'”
Nightcrawler Returns After 23 Years
Cumming first played Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United and did not appear in any other X-Men film, making Avengers: Doomsday his first time in the role in 23 years.
The return has been easier on him in the makeup chair. Cumming said in April 2025 that the transformation now takes a fraction of the time it did on X2.
“Before it was about four and a half hours to apply it, but now it’s only 90 minutes,” he said. “Before, all of the tattoos were done by hand. They hadn’t decided on them before we started filming. Now, they just stick onto my face. It’s a game changer.”
When Avengers: Doomsday Opens
Joe Russo and Anthony Russo direct Avengers: Doomsday, which brings Robert Downey Jr. back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Doctor Doom. The film opens in US theaters on December 18, 2026, two days after its UK release on December 16.
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