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The Good Wife: Season 1

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I joined the first season of The Good Wife on CBS as a guest star to play Eli Gold for a few episodes. The show stars Julianna Margulies as Alicia, whose politician husband, played by Chris Noth, has been involved in a sex scandal.

Playing Eli is fascinating for me because he is a grown-up. He is a man in a suit. They even put grey in my hair, which is quite funny considering my hair was colored, so they were actually putting grey on top of color on top of grey! He is an image consultant, a reputation rehabilitator, and he is Jewish. He is a million miles away from me. Also I was filming in gaps between shooting Burlesque with Cher and Christina Aguilera, in which I play a club door whore with black nail varnish and Comme des Garçons outfits, so the whole experience was a little schizophrenic.

But I learned something.  Initially I thought I didn't understand Eli, he seemed so far away from me and I was unused to the process of TV series acting. But then I just altered my opinion of him and instead of thinking I don't relate to him because he has a life that I don't comprehend, I thought he is exotic like every human being and I can understand that.

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Burlesque

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Burlesque is set in a Burlesque bar in Los Angeles, run by Cher. As my character, the door whore Alexis, constantly says 'We may not have windows but we do have the best view on the Sunset Strip'.

Christina Aguilera arrives in town and soon becomes the star of the Burlesque show, but danger is near at hand as Cher may have to sell the club to a nasty developer. The film also stars Stanley Tucci, Eric Dane, Kristen Bell, Julianne Hough and Cam Gigandet.

Here's a video I made on my last day of shooting, and my big number that was eventually cut from the film...

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In Concert

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In between filming seasons one and two of The Good Wife, The Runaway in South Africa and Who Do You Think You Are?, I managed to fit in a few concerts this year! I did two week long engagements of at Feinstein's in New York City, as well as Broad Stages in Santa Monica, the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and back on the east coast at Fire Island's Whyte Hall (where I id a hybrid show called Alan Cumming: Uncut! , before returning to the 2X2 festival in Dallas in October.

in August I finally took my cabaret show home.

I did three performances of I Bought A Blue Car Today at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the Assembly Hall, the historic venue on the Mound, the former home of the Church of Scotland and the Scottish parliament. There is a statue of John Knox in the courtyard, and I wondered (aloud) during the show what he would make of me and what I had to say!

In many ways, it was a full circle experience for me. I cut my teeth at the Edinburgh Fringe as a young drama student doing cabaret in the mid eighties, with Victor and Barry.  They went on to become the festival darlings for many years. But I hadn't performed on the Fringe since 1991, and so coming back with a cabaret of my own was a really amazing feeling. I'm older, wiser and ballsier, and finally able to share it with my homeland in a show that has so much to do with my Scottishness both in content and in the style of performance. So this was good times.

Here's a little report from NY1 about my run in Edinburgh.