Alan Cumming doesn't think The Traitors is gay enough.
On the cover of Entertainment Weekly's Pride issue, The Traitors host Alan Cumming revealed that he "lobbied quite hard to have more queer representation" on the show, which he calls "the campiest thing since Christmas."
"On a purely statistical basis, I think [the previous casts have been] very diverse racially and gender-wise, but there just wasn't enough LGBTQ people represented," Cumming told EW. "It's exposure therapy, it's visibility. And you have to do it in every small way you can. We need to see that trans people are everywhere. 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. Here are those people,'" he added. "And if I have a chance to help do that by just saying to the producers of The Traitors, 'We need to make sure there's more queer and trans people on the show,' I will.
Getting more queer contestants was especially important for Cumming after RuPaul's Drag Race star Peppermint was the first person banished from the house last season. While Cumming admits it was "just by chance," he also says "that was not a good look in the world we live in," pointing out that the first person to go was the lone trans person of color on the cast.
"Obviously, it's shone a bigger spotlight on it. So 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," Cumming said. "We've just got to be more representative. And even if there are more…. I think, 'Why can't we have more people on these shows than actually are, percentage-wise, in society?' Why would that be so bad? It's happened for centuries the other way around with white straight men. I mean, why are we being so shackled by our quotas? There should be trans and queer people everywhere, and people of color everywhere, until people just shut up and stop being so stupid and hateful about it."
The Traitors season 3 cast got a lot more queer, including queer contestants Bob Harper, Bob the Drag Queen, Carolyn Wiger, Chrishell Stuase, Gabby Windey, and Lord Ivar Mountbatten.
Hopefully next season will be even more queer!