METRO WEEKLY: Growing up in Scotland, were you aware of your same-sex attractions?

ALAN CUMMING: It wasn’t an inkling. I always felt as though I was bisexual, and since I was sexually active, I had relationships with both sexes.

MW: What was it like growing up at a time when being gay wasn’t just frowned upon, it was a crime?

CUMMING: I was probably too young and I lived in too remote an area to be really aware of those things. I mean, I was aware it wasn’t totally socially acceptable, but I don’t know, for some reason I never really worried about that. I’ve never felt shameful about my sexuality at all. I just let it happen, acted on it when I wanted to and had the chance to, and just found my own way.

MW: In the LGBT movement, bisexuality sometimes gets thrown under the bus. A lot of gay people say “Well, bisexual men are gays who haven’t made up their minds.”

CUMMING: I think that’s a little bit of an old wive’s attitude, to be honest. I don’t really believe people still think that — people who know people who are bisexual or who know anything about the issues — but I do feel that it’s something that people are scared of or certainly ignorant of. We like boxes, we like to be labelled, we like to wear a uniform, and so anyone who questions that and says they feel a bit different, people find it harder to understand. I think it’s an interesting allegory for how we think as a society, really. There’s two political parties in this country, and people would like us to be only two sexualities. I think both the political situation in this country and our attitudes toward sexuality need to diversify a bit.

MW: I also think bisexuals by and large are not a very vocal group.

CUMMING: I think people are vocal when they need to have legal rights and civil rights given to them. And that’s why I think it’s been amazing the last few years about how the transgender community has blossomed and people have changed their attitudes towards them. Their place in the world is changing. I think if you’re a bisexual, you have the same rights as a gay person, the same rights as a straight person, so in a funny sort of way it’s only about an attitude. It’s more bisexual visibility and bisexual understanding. It’s a bigger picture. It’s about people seeing the grey instead of just black and white.

MW: I think it largely depends on who you choose to marry. You married a man.

CUMMING: I did marry a woman a long time ago.

MW: The point is, to a certain extent, we’re defined by which gender we choose to visibly spend our lives with.

CUMMING: Everyone is, don’t you think?

MW: Yes, but if a bisexual person chooses to spend their life with a woman, they automatically get rights and presumably don’t incur the wrath of homophobic conservatives. But if they choose to spend their life with a man, they’re a target.

CUMMING: But if a bisexual were vocal about their sexuality, they would be on the radar.

MW: That’s true. How do you feel about the speed with which our advances in marriage equality came?

CUMMING: Well, I’m very happy that our president and our Supreme Court made this monumental decision. But I don’t see it as a speedy change. It’s taken decades and decades of people fighting for our rights to come to this point, although the marriage equality movement was a relatively new one in the political sphere. And it’s not over yet. There’s still lots of things need to be changed. You can still be fired for being gay and lose your house for being gay in some states. There’s still work to do, but obviously it’s been a very successful time for equality — which is a funny sentence. So I don’t really see it as a speedy thing at all.

MW: When I say speedy, I mean it feels like it all happened very quickly once the dominoes started to fall.

CUMMING: Oh, yes, exactly. But also it didn’t come from nowhere. The groundwork had done by many people for a very long time. I love that the word equality is sort of a relatively new political concept, when actually it’s just about being equal. It’s funny that we think about it as a privilege rather than a right.

MW: Scotland legalized marriage last year. How did you feel when you heard that?

CUMMING: I’m very proud of the way Scotland is right now, politically and socially.

MW: Do you miss life there?

CUMMING: No. I have an apartment in Edinburgh and I go back and forth a lot. I miss the sensibility sometimes. I miss the sense of humor. It’s like anywhere, when you go back to where you’re from, you realize you have a commonality with the people. But I go back enough that I feel connected to it. I still feel very Scottish, even though I’ve been in America for a long time.

MW: Speaking of, you do an American accent incredibly well. Anybody who watched you on The Good Wife, and didn’t know you were Scottish, wouldn’t have a clue.

CUMMING: It’s just my job. I find it amazing that people are so amazed by that. I guess there are some people do it badly, but I trained as an actor at a time when it wasn’t really fashionable to use your own voice, and certainly you cannot have a Scottish accent on the British stage. So I spent years of drama school learning to do pronunciations — I was trained to use my ear for accents. I rarely do parts where I use my own voice. Over the years, I’ve done lots and lots of films as an American, but I guess it’s just because The Good Wife is on TV, it becomes much more of a thing for people. It’s just like another facet of the character for me.

MW: You’re bringing your show here. Tell me a bit about it.

CUMMING: The show is called Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, and I premiered it June last year at the Cafe Carlyle in New York. It’s a cabaret — a collection of songs I’ve chosen that I enjoy singing. I call them sappy songs because I connect to them in an emotional way. Some of them are well-known songs. And it’s a true cabaret. I’m telling stories about my life, I’m talking about some of the stuff that happened to me over the last while. It’s a smorgasbord — I tell funny stories, I tell quite touching things and I sing all these songs.

It’s a very intimate evening, where I’m trying to be as authentic as I can and connect to the audience and doing that by telling them things about my life, probably more than they actually want to hear. It’s a whole evening that is a celebration of authenticity, really.

MW: You career has spanned every facet of entertainment. Is there something you prefer over the other?

CUMMING: I like them all. But if you had a machine gun to my head, I would probably choose the cabaret show I’m doing right now. The connection I get with an audience, the immediacy of that, the intensity of that, is really a fantastic thing. That’s why I wanted to become an actor, is to kind of connect and communicate with people.

MW: Speaking of a cabaret….

CUMMING: Yes, I know.

MW: What Joel Grey did with the role of The Emcee was iconic, and because it was immortalized on film, did you have any doubts about stepping into it?

CUMMING: When you play a big Shakespearean character, for example — Hamlet’s a big touchstone in an actor’s career — you are obviously going to be compared to any previous ones from the past. At that time, I had just done a Hamlet that was very interesting and unusual to some people. I came to Cabaret in London immediately after that, but I really didn’t want to do a musical. I was a little snobby about it. I said, “If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it in a very authentic, gritty way.” I worked with Sam Mendes on the show and we both wanted to do the production authentically, a little more like a Weimar cabaret club for real. So I did it and I did it my way.

And then like four years later it came to Broadway. And it was only then that everyone started asking me if I tried to do it differently from Joel on purpose — and I didn’t. I really hadn’t thought about him in the gestation of that character. He wasn’t on my mind at all. I’d seen the movie — it was obviously an iconic performance. But there’s quite a lot of roles you can potentially do in your life that are made iconic by other people, yet you have a chance to do it your way. I approached it like I was doing Hamlet. I said, “There’s other people who had done it before me and done it in the way people were used to,” and I was just going to do it my way. That’s all you can do.

MW: In the process, you yourself ended up becoming iconic in the role.

CUMMING: Yes. If you go back to the Hamlet model again, there’s been many iconic Hamlets. Cabaret is such a brilliant show and The Emcee is such a fascinating character, there’s many, many different ways you could do it. And I see on social media people are doing the show — and they’ll look like me, they’ve got the kind of harness thing on. And I think, “Wow, just do it your own way, that was just one way I chose. You could do it however you like.” It’s not even a real character. It’s just basically a symbol — a pied piper if you like — and you can do whatever you like with that part. And so, in a funny way the fact that I became iconic playing it and Joel was iconic, is a testament to that show and the brilliant writing of Kander and Ebb. I’m sure in ten years time we’ll get another production of it and another actor will do their own iconic version of it.

MW: Would you do a film remake if they offered it?

CUMMING: I think it’s past now. I’ve done it a few times and I don’t want it to be the thing that I keep returning to. If they do it in another 16 years I’ll be 66. I’m gonna play Fräulein Schneider then.

MW: So, we have to get to The Good Wife obviously. Eli Gold is almost an iconic character in himself. What is it like being part of such a remarkable show?

CUMMING: It’s really great. It’s been an amazing thing for me on many levels. First of all, to play this character — and, it’s funny, he is kind of iconic. He’s this tightly wound symbol of modern America. He’s the dichotomy of modern America — he’s trying to do good, but he’s being ruthless in order to get it. I feel lucky to be on a show like this.

I think what’s interesting about the show is that it’s very morally ambivalent — it doesn’t tell you what to think about things. It offers up sometimes very opposing views on certain issues and lets you make up your mind and also you see the characters that you know you are supposed to root for sometimes do things that are very horrifying and really appall you, and vice versa. So I love that moral ambivalence. I think that’s what makes it so unusual.

MW: How has being on a series this long impacted your life?

CUMMING: It’s been great — The last six years I’ve been at home. I live in New York, and it shoots from here. I’ve been able to have a more of a stable life. And while films take less time to make, it seems like I was always on a plane and away. So it’s been very nice to have some stability in my life in that way.

Also, until Eli, I never really played a person who was like a middle-aged man in a suit. I’ve always played more crazy people. I rarely would play someone who was completely based in reality. So that’s been a great thing. It’s changed the perception of me as an actor as well. Although, I think Eli is a bit insane and histrionic.

MW: Are you ever surprised by the direction they take him in?

CUMMING: Oh, yeah, often — especially this season. It’s been a big year for him. Huge betrayal. Lots of things have happened that have given me much more to play, a lot more colors to his personality. And I think it’s interesting for the audience to see him in a vulnerable situation and not be always on top. I’m trying to do this without spoiling the story to you — but there’s been a recent huge revelation. I love the way they’re bringing back elements of storylines from years ago. It’s been a great season.

MW: Why the big changes?

CUMMING: I was considering leaving the show. I felt like I was in a rut. I was doing the same thing again and again, as much as I enjoyed it. They came through with a new storyline for Eli, and I’m very glad I stayed.

MW: Is there something more personal about playing a gay or bisexual character for you?

CUMMING: The sexuality doesn’t matter. Every character I ever got, I just play them who I think they are. Sometimes their stories I connect with on a more personal level. It’s not necessarily to do with sexuality for me. I think it’s more about the content of the story.

MW: You’ve worked with GLAAD, The Trevor Project, HRC. Do you feel that being an out celebrity makes you automatically part of the social activism machine?

CUMMING: I do those things willingly. Sometimes it can be taxing just having to do many — in a funny sort of way, a lot of the events and a lot of the things I do, I sort of think “I’m fighting for something, and if we get it, I won’t have to do this any more.”

I get tired of constantly talking about my sexuality. If I were straight, I wouldn’t be talking about being straight all the time. And I think it’s partly to do with the fact that there’s inequality in that area, partly because there’s curiosity about it and it still exists. So I’m much more bored of that than I am of trying to help people less fortunate than myself.

MW: True, if you were a straight actor we wouldn’t be discussing your sexuality at all.

CUMMING: Thank you. I hope you put that in your article.

Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs is Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 8 p.m. in the Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane in North Bethesda. Tickets are $35 to $85. Call 301-581-5100 or visit strathmore.org.