See all the fabulous photos from EW's Pride cover story with The Traitors host Alan Cumming

Strike a pose

"I want to look sort of mischievous and fun and challenging. challenging people's ideas of the binary in terms of what men and women wear," Cumming says.

Playing the clown

"I see a photo shoot as a sort of a character to play," he says. "It's much more exciting for me to do something like this than to just sort of look nice. I'm not interested in looking nice. I am nice, but do you know what I mean?"

Sleeve it to him

In his everyday life, "I have my own sense of style," Cumming says, "but it's a bit more 'weird little elf' rather than Fashion God."

Painting a picture

"I think it's really important, as someone in the mainstream, to challenge people's views of what a man of my age should wear," he says. "I like that a show like The Traitors, a reality competition show, is able to have big statements about, as you say, genderf---ness."

Wearing your heart front and center

"I just think it's really important to remind people that bisexuals are everywhere," Cumming says. "And I think, when you're well-known and queer, you have a certain duty to look back and help the people who are coming along behind you."

Getting intimate

"I always say that sexuality is like going on a vacation: You don't always want to go to the same place twice," he says.

Silence isn't golden

"We need to see that queer people are everywhere, that trans people are everywhere," says Cumming. "They felt more comfortable to be visible in the last couple of decades. But historically, there's always a backlash against change, and we are in the midst of a huge one right now. My response to that is to push back and say, 'No, we're not going to hide.'"

Playing his cards

Following the early banishment of season 2 contestant Peppermint, Cumming "lobbied quiet hard" for The Traitors producers to add more queer contestants in season 3. "I don't think that they had a disadvantage, but it would be better if there were more [queer] people there, so it didn't seem like they were token," he says.

Open deck

"The thing that makes me most happy in all my work is when people say they saw me talking on a talk show about being queer and I was happy and had no shame about it. Or they saw me on the Tonys dancing provocatively with another man, or something like that," Cumming says. "All that, to me, is really important and inspiring."

Check out our full 2024 LGBTQ+ Pride cover story for more from Cumming.