Alan Cumming
Appearances
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Yeah, trauma is sort of... I mean, I think there was a thing that I really loved when I was writing one of my books that I discovered this thing. It's called afterwards-ness. But I can't remember what the German word is. It's a Freud thing.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
So this is your first one. You're popping your cherry with me.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Yeah, it's a really good waiting for Guffman kind of word. But it was about this idea that... It's not like, you know, delayed trauma because it wasn't traumatic then. You know how something traumatic happens to you and you go, that didn't happen. And then you go on and then 10 years later, you're like, ah, it's not that because there wasn't trauma.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
You only have trauma when you think about it afterwards. So it's sort of, so the trauma is in your more mature adult understanding, or not necessarily adult, but in your later understanding and your values, looking back at an instant that when you were there at the time you didn't,
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Right, I see. But it's also... It's not saying there wasn't trauma. There's trauma now.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I mean, I sort of understand it because this thing happened to me that I totally had, you know, sort of a sexual relationship with an older man when I was, you know, a teenager.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Oh, well, it's true. And then I realised that actually, technically, it was illegal because of my age in Scotland at the time. And then I just actually thought, wow, actually, that's really bizarre. And, you know, the more I thought about it, and the more I sort of examined the thing, I realised I was kind of slightly groomed. I don't think I had any at the time, I felt liberated actually by it.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I felt empowered by it. And I felt it was sort of fun and kind and I felt, you know, good about it. It wasn't until many years later that in in the light of my, in my 50s or whatever, I look back on that and I thought, ew.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I mean, and now I still don't even think it was a traumatic experience for me. I still believe it was all these things, but it's within the context, it feels different now.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
We could find out because remember that I wore that terrible outfit the night we met. I was wearing a terrible, terrible green.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
How it all happened? Well, I was married to my ex-wife and we were trying to have a baby. And I was, I mean, I was sort of, you know, quite successful. I was living in London. We had a big house. We were all sort of, you know, bought a big house so we could have kids and all that stuff. I think when you decide to become a father,
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
A, you think, oh, well, I've got to have a life that will... I've got to be secure and I've got to be sorted out in order to bring this person into the world. And therefore, that brings up feelings about your own father and your own family and your own thing. And that is what did it for me. And that's what was the sort of catalyst for all these memories to come out.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Because I just... And I still... I mean, I've never, I haven't had children and I still, if I'm honest, worry that I, as much therapy as I've had and as much as I'm a kind person and blah, blah, blah, would I have the kind of DNA of being, not that I'd feel I would be an abusive father, but I don't know. I just, it scares me. Being a father scares me because I...
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I am in a lineage of someone who is, my father, obviously mentally ill and sort of psychotic and a variety of personality disorders. But it's, yeah, I think my body said, you better get your shit together because you can't just swan into this. You've got a lot of stuff to deal with about what it is to be a father and what happened to you as a child of a father. So that's what happened.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And then it all kind of came out I was overwhelmed, was feeling like I was insane, was also feeling I needed to get out of my marriage, I needed to change my life, I needed to do all these things. It was not a good time for any of those things to happen.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Never is. And... Yeah. And I sort of went under. I went to, it's so crazy, but I went to Primrose Hill. I rented a little bed set in Primrose Hill, so I sort of moved out of my marital home and then sort of went there and kind of waited for it all to sort of happen. That's so brave. Was it? I mean, I just sort of felt, I felt I was hiding. I mean, I was hiding, but I just, I knew I couldn't,
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
It was a couple months later, but it wasn't. Yes. But yeah.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
You know, having, obviously my ex-wife was not, she was freaking out because all of a sudden it's gone from us trying to have a baby and this idyllic life to me going, I don't want to have a baby. I think I want to leave you. I've got to get away. So I couldn't do all this in that environment. And I tried to explain that to her.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
So off I went to my little bed sit and was going to therapy and then spoke to my brother and my mum and all kind of things. So luckily I was able to take a few months off and just let it all come out. It was like being overwhelmed with memories washing over you. And thinking, can that be true? Did that happen? And, you know, all that stuff.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And luckily, you know, I had my brother to back things up.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I don't think with his first child, because that was before this. But I think, like, shortly after that, he then had other kids. And I think so. And he, you know, he... did some work and was in a men's group and stuff like that. And, you know, I think he was much more conscious of it. I mean, I feel like so lucky that I was able to just basically go, you know, hey, my agents and everyone.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I'm having a nervous breakdown. So I'm having a couple of months off my top international career. That's easier to do when you have a job like that, when you have a real job. it's harder to do that. You've got to kind of do it in increments. And I think what you're saying about your family and what they were exposed to, I felt like, oh, I've made him go through this too.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Or it was a little later for him, but you know, I've made, I've brought this all up for all of us, me and my mum and him, but especially him. And...
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
We both pushed it away. I mean, I don't quite know. I don't know to which level of... Interesting. ...that he had done it, but we never talked about it. It was not... You know, I talk in the book, actually, about the silence in our house. This sort of tension of just like... None of us really... You know, we would reference it like...
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
be careful, he's in a terrible mood, or just things like that, but you would never really... I mean, when something is so constant for years and years, you don't think, oh my God, this is crazy, because it's just your life. It just is. It just is. And also, he was six years older than me, which is kind of a weird gap. When I was 10, he was 16.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
So, and he left, and he left and got married, and so then I was on my own with my dad for a while, which is, that was the worst bit. But... I feel as adults, we kind of, we'd sort of say a little bit, you know, maybe after a few drinks, it's, oh, you know, dad was pretty crazy, you know, but never really, truly sort of embracing it. Dealing with it. So it wasn't... So I was the... So I did that.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And I sort of... That was another sort of, you know, whip myself even more. I'm affecting my brother and his life by doing this. But he was really great and really supportive. And also what's great is just to have someone to... Because in that situation, you're so worried about being believed. You know, you just think people are not... And some people didn't.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Well, it's good to be nervous, Monica, because it means you care.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Yeah, like my ex-wife. So I think she did eventually, but... Right, right. She... said to me that I was using it as an excuse to get out of the marriage and she was angry and she was just you know so you're so tender and you're so raw that You can't actually... And that pushed us apart even further because you can't be around people who don't believe you. It's just too much.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Or do you... Well, with new things, you know. I get nervous when I do my concerts. I've got a new concert show, you know, it's called Uncut. And I've only done it about six times. And there's always a big gap before I do it again. So I get really nervous with that.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Oh, no. We kind of would go. A duty visit once every few years.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Because where my in-laws at the time lived was right by where I'd grown up. But no, he wasn't really in our lives. And he, you know, it was very, he was with someone else. And it was a duty thing. It was just sort of a terrible, I never speak to him. Then all this happened. And it was my mum, actually, who...
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Oh, I know, I was going to say the thing about when you worry about how your family are being exposed because of this trauma that you've made public. Right, public within the family, public. But also public within the world, which is what happened to you initially, but it was what I chose to do later by writing about it.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
That that was another sort of cycle of, oh my God, my poor family are going to have to deal with this. But actually it was the best thing I could have possibly have done. It was such a positive thing for them to... Like I saw my mum and my brother at a book event everyone applauding them for supporting me and me telling the story. And them saying like, oh gosh, this is a really great, you know.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And actually, I think it's the idea that it's people were helped by the fact that I was this open and they were a part of it. They really understood and it was really empowering. And I think that's the biggest shock to me about writing that book and just in general being, realising that I do that in my life in other ways.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I just, I am open and I say stuff and I, and just the power of someone in the public eye talking about trauma or mental health or anything. actually that people connect to that and think, oh good, I'm not alone. They seem to have got it together and they seem to be okay. But the common thing is that they've got it together because they have talked about it and because they've been open about it.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
It's like coming out. Coming out in any form is a positive thing. I believe that. And for people who say it isn't, I want to slap them.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Because you are encouraging people to stay in a place of ill health.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And I just can't. I don't. When people say that, especially to young actors, for example.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And the sort of the physical manifestations that are potential, potential physical manifestations of that lie and that secret life for your body, you know, just as you're in a holistic way is terrible. And I think it's nobody I feel comes out and wishes they hadn't because they are immediately embraced, but they also are, it's such a relief.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Well, you know, when you have a lie and you want to tell people, or you've, you know, something, a secret, you want to, when you tell the secret, it is liberating.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
make sure you tell the secret to the right person in the world to say this sentence too but okay you win uh but you know what i mean there's a liberation yes from for sure and i'm sure there was a liberation for you when i mean even it was wasn't there and like when when the truth came out about oh gosh um not about not about the affair necessarily but about the other stuff Wasn't there?
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But like now... Mm-hmm. I mean, do you think that happened to me? I did that. I made some wrong decisions.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But... Now, I've come through it, and I am a happy person, and that's what happened to me. And I'm not going to... You can apologize for things, but you can't change it. So there's a liberation in being able to say, that happened.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
November the 22nd, 2001. Dear Monica, last night I finished reading your book, Monica's Story, and I'm so shocked and horrified. When I first came to America and the whole scandal was everywhere, I thought that it was a horrible thing because you were caught up in a political revenge thing. and that you were a little pawn being used by Starr to get at Clinton.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
All your great inventions. Yeah. That's what I think of you in that wee house.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Honestly, people will not notice that. So those years when you had a wee couple of houses in L.A., And I would go for parties or premieres or things and you wouldn't be able to come to them because it's public things. And so we'd go into your house or you'd come to my hotel. And all through that time, you would have all these fantastic ideas.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Like, I was like, oh my God, Monica, this is like the best idea ever. You've got to like get. And that's what you did. You were basically like an inventor.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
That was fantastic. So each, you could take a can of cola according to a thing you want to support, a charity you want to support. Then there was the thing about the bags for your bags.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Love purse poncho. And snappy names as well. What were the other ones?
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
That's right. That's right. Of course, they should do that. I had another one. I had the one which I still think people should do. All the more now when everyone's sort of embracing more feminine-y things in men's looks. Nail varnish and stuff. Lip salve for men with a bit of colour in it. And I thought Mac should do it. Because I was doing something with Mac.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I remember I said this to the head of Mac. He was like, mm-hmm. But he called it Maccho. Maccho.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Honestly, but that's what I think of you in that time is you like sitting in your little house.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And it was funny, actually, because it was my mum who suggested it. I mean, I was in the middle of this thing. I was remembering all these things. I was having a lot of therapy. I'd had time off to just sort of wade my way through this mire. And I went to talk to my mum about it and she suggested that I should go and talk to my father, which I was, I don't know, I just didn't see coming.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And I thought that you were young and in love. And I also remember being so horrified at the way the media vilified you, but I had no idea how much more painful and disgraceful the whole thing was. Wee, Monica. I can't imagine how awful it all was. And also, I am so amazed that you've come through it to be the fabulous and beautiful person that you are today. Brava, brava.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I didn't see her suggesting that. She was very much, you know, he was sort of estranged from us and, But, and then my therapist also suggests, I mean, I think it's, you know, when you, now it seems like, well, duh, that's the most obvious thing you've got to do in this process.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But when you're in the middle of it, you don't know the, you think it's, you don't see any way out and you don't sort of see a sort of logical trajectory. But obviously any, confronting your abuser is a really powerful and necessary, if you can, if they're alive and if you have, the power and the strength to do so. So I did that. I went and my brother came with me. We went to confront my dad.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And, you know, he was still living in the house that we'd grown up in and had been, you know, some terrible things had happened in it, violence and stuff. And we told him we were going to see him. We hadn't seen him for years at this point, years. So I think he knew something was up and he knew that I was separated by this point. So he knew stuff was going on.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But we said to him, we'd like to go for a walk. We couldn't go into the house. And I still haven't been able to go into that house. I was doing this show with Miriam Margulies when we sort of went round Scotland in a van together for Channel 4. And I went to the house. And it's all been changed now. And there's other, you know, it's lovely.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Because it was in a sawmill yard because of the forestry thing. And all the sheds that are now, I got kind of whacked, thrown across by my father.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
are now lovely sort of you know rustic homes and well being so it's a really bizarre but the people that we sat outside the house that this is where we i lived in and i just couldn't go inside even a couple of years ago i didn't i didn't want to i thought even i don't want to go in with a film crew and be oh yeah no no no i don't even know and then my brother late a couple days later he went in with my mom we went back to the house we went on a walk
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And in a way, because of the walk, I can remember it. I remember what happened at different parts of the... We walked around the estate grounds. And I'd written it all down. I'd written it all down.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I wrote him a letter that I just wanted to... I wanted to have the backup of making sure that I said all the things that we wanted to say. And so I had that. And it was terrifying. I mean, we were both terrified. And I thought my dad was going to hit me at one point. I really thought he was going to hit me.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
He had a stick, like a kind of, you know, not a walking, but like a staff that, you know, you use when you're hiking sort of thing. And he had these boots. And I remember his boots were making this sort of, the little tacks on them, making this crunchy noise on the road as we were walking along. And he was sort of whacking the stick against the side of his boot, this kind of thing. And I
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I hope this hasn't churned it all up again for you, but I don't think you should ever stop being told how abused you were by the American so-called justice system. Your dignity and loyalty throughout it all is the only light that shines. I'm giving thanks that you've come through it all and are a lovely person and my friend. Love and peace from Alan. Ah.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
a couple of the things I said. Like I remember when I said, I want to ask you about your childhood. I'm curious about if this kind of abuse happened to you and if there's some sort of lineage to this. I'm trying to make sense of this. And I was aware that I was trying not to do too much therapy speak, but obviously I was.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But I remember at that point, he said that nothing happened to him in his childhood. He got really angry when I tried to, bring that up. And I thought he was going to hit me then. And then also he, he said, I remember it was a terrible moment when he said, about, I said, why did you, why did you, you know, why do you think you started hitting us?
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And was it to do with the fact that you, you were starting to have affairs outside of the marriage and things, and it was your guilt that was making, you know, you were, acting out these things. Do you think that was maybe what it was? I was really trying to make sense of it. And of course, that I realise now is a foolish thing because you're never going to get sense.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
You're never going to get logic from someone who is mentally ill.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But it was a necessary part of the process. But I remember he said, my marriage was over three years after Tommy was born. He said that as some sort of validation or sort of thing. And I remember thinking, wow, thank you so much. That's three years before I was born.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And then right then I thought he was going to hit me again as well. So it was incredibly empowering because we said all these things and we said, it's up to you now. If you, you know, this happened, we were giving it back to you. I mean, I was obviously doing loads of therapy talk now that I'm thinking about it, but we're giving it back to you. I don't want to carry this anymore.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I don't want to carry this. I don't want to feel ashamed of it. I don't want to protect you. I am telling you this so that I can move forward. That's what's been wrong with me recently. That's what's happened. That's why my life's been turned upside down. And I'm not, I'm done. We're both done. We're moving, you know.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And if you want to be a part of our life, you have to come to us and explain or say something or we didn't use the word apologize, but like say you've got to step up and be a part of it and not ignore this. And so as we went away, he walked away into the nursery, you know, down the steps into where the trees were. It was a nursery where trees were growing.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And I remember thinking he had tears in his eyes. I remember thinking he was upset. I could see that. And then we walked away and got into the car and we were just shaking, absolutely shaking.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And the funny thing was Tom said to me, well done, Alan. You didn't, you hardly used the script at all. Like it was some sort of play I'd done. But it was just, we were both just, you know, we'd done this incredible thing. We'd faced our demon.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And we'd done it in the place where it happened as well, not in the house, but still a lot of it happened outside in these grounds and certainly around the house, lots and lots, because we always put to work on the estate. So we did that and it was incredible.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Oh, well, absolutely. But what I was absolutely sure about was that it was not possible for me to continue in my life without some acknowledgement from him that it had happened. And so, you know, giving it back. I suppose giving it back is the wrong thing. It's sort of sharing it. I still have it. I mean, my God. Of course. I just remembered something else the other day.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And it's, you know, moments that suddenly just come into your mind and... you think, you know, and I sort of think, whoa, what happened then? Why am I thinking, why am I remembering this? Or why has that memory been extended a wee bit? And that's why I wrote the second memoir, because I was just so scared that everybody was going to think, oh, it's all fine, it's all wrapped up.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
You know, especially in America, people love the idea that you do a book saying, hey, I've had this trauma, I've had this abuse, and I am fine. I grew, you know, I'm a nice, kind person.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
and they think that's the end and I wanted to partly write this other book was to say actually trauma continues and you just have to deal you just get better at dealing with it and you so that this memory that I've been having a lot recently is an example of that uh and you know I'm gonna talk to my brother about it the next time I see him but
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
It's, you have to make peace with the fact you're not going to get satisfaction. You're not going to get a resolution. Yeah. And not just because my dad's dead, but just that it's, you know, when someone is illogical and irrational and mentally ill, there's not going to be, it's not all wrapped up nicely.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Yeah. Actually, the thing when you said flits in, that's my experience of the one time I had a sort of suicidal sort of things. That's what it felt like. It was flitty. It was like, you know, your periphery's like this, all this mental periphery. And then all of a sudden, it's just sort of like this, the little things. And it's just an idea that becomes an option.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
It's not like, oh, I'm going to kill myself. No. It's like... things are really shit right now. I could do this. That looks horrible. This way is looking awful. Oh God, do I have to do that? And then like, oh, that's another option. And then blah, blah, blah. And that scared me because of the way that it just flitted in.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And so the way that thoughts and negative thoughts, I think, are more flitters.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
There's not a word in that that I would change in terms of how I still feel. I mean, obviously other things have happened, but I'm always amazed that you are
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Yeah, we love you so much. I love you guys. You know what I dreamt about recently? I saw Anna Wintour coming out of the shower. Oh.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I haven't told him yet. I forgot to talk about dreams this week.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
It's so great we get a chance to do it. We don't have to eat.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
as sane and as kind and as well balanced and as sort of vulnerable as well you know you went away kind of in sort of your wilderness years and kind of hid yeah and then when but you've come I mean it's just it's incredible actually it's incredible to me that you have well you know survived and sort of blossomed thanks and also I think it's really interesting you know now what would be the difference now and
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I thought that when I did my podcast, it was during COVID. It was just such a nice way to talk to people, to get to talk to your friends.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But it's kind of a sad indictment that you have to do a podcast in order to get a proper chat, isn't it?
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
We should go on retreats, Monica, you and I. Oh, I'm down for that. Grant Shaver can come.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And Mary Darling. We can go to our house in the country.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I feel completely at peace. Whole. Whole. Yes. I feel whole. Sounds dirty.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Like this lady in Edinburgh who has a bagel shop. She's from Montreal. She named a bagel after me. And it's called Brosses. Her name's Lara Brosses. It's called Brosses Bagels. And her whole thing is fill your hole. That's sort of motto of the bagel shop. And when she wanted to do a bagel named after me, she wanted to call it coming in your hole. And I said, no, no, we will not.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And I called it the wholesome coming instead. I kind of flipped it.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
You know, I've become chumps with little Dylan Mulvaney. Right. And we're just thinking about, she's another person who I feel like came through something awful and sort of vilified on a sort of massive scale. But with the sort of the social media turnaround thing and the way it kind of, she's bounced back so much. I mean, she's still obviously damaged and she's had a terrible thing.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But I think in a way that nowadays our sort of, the cycle of all that is much faster.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Whereas in your day, or that day, it was there for such a long time. In a funny sort of way, I think social media and things sort of flushes things out in a way.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
necessarily always a good thing because it flushes out truth and facts and you know and it's not just about I said to Grant about you know people are so ill educated and I don't mean they've not gone to college and things like that because obviously there's some people who've got degrees and whatever but they're ill educated and you know they've spout these things that are clearly not true and
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I don't know how long it will take to make that better.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Who's Ellen's mom. She'll be so excited I'm doing this with you.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I know. And then she's so happy because the chef wanted to speak to her about how moist her cake was.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
She's got a picture of her kind of talking to the chef and being so flattered.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I grew up on a country estate, but the Downton Abbey house had been demolished because there was a thing. It's a terrible thing, actually. There's a really good book called Scotland's Lost Houses or something. So there's a thing where in the 50s, I think it was,
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
the death duties for all these families, these sort of, you know, it was a time of change where like, you know, there was the welfare state was starting, labour got in after the war, all this stuff, the world was changing and all these big houses, the families, when they died, the death duties were so much that they, what they did was they took all the good things out of the houses, all the marble and the blah blah and everything and then they blew them up
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
So they wouldn't have to pay the duties on it or the tax.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
So there's all these amazing... I mean, we've got like milk. It's kind of bonkers. It's nuts. But we've got a load of them. So it wasn't me. But it was all these kind of more sort of grand, Victorian-y, you know, type things. So I lived on a country estate. My father was a forester. I mean, it was very Downton Abbey. There was like gamekeepers, trappers, you know, all that.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And there was the big house, but it was gone. All that was left was the stables and the...
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
chapel in the chapel we had sort of like you know dances and yeah dances and Christmas parties and the stables were for shoots and so there's beating I went I did beating I just had to bang the tree so the pheasants would fly up so those rich old white guys with guns could shoot them and stuff like that so it was very sort of feudal but the but the Downton Abbey bit was was missing when I think when we first moved to that estate I think it was owned by a shipping heiress okay and then a big insurance company bought it right
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I mean, not great, but... No, a completely correlation of my abusive... childhood and my father's obsession with my hair. I mean, obsessed with my hair and my brother's hair. And my book, first memoir, not my father's son. I talk like the first thing is just him going into a rage and then just shearing my hair with these sheep clippers. You know, I had short hair.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I mean, I always have like a short back and sides. It was always like, you know, but if I, if it was a tiny bit too long or something, he would go nuts. And I don't quite understand it. But it made me, various things happened. Like when I left home, went to drama school, I would get, you know when you lie back in the thing to get hair washed, I would vomit.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I would like, when they first started to touch my hair, I'd have to go and be sick. Oh my gosh. That happened a few times. Since then, you know, I change my hair all the time. It's a sort of a, it's my power. Like I feel like I was so controlled. How were you controlled, Alan? Yeah. Controlled in several ways, you know, in the first way, just living in fear, living in absolute fear.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And secondly, of being controlled by violence, being hit regularly, daily almost. And also being controlled by being, having constant barrage of negative things about myself being told to me. That never good enough, always a waste of time, you know. But also at the same time, my dad said things like, you know, I remember once he said to me, if you fell out of a window, you'd fall up the way.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Isn't that funny? And then also being controlled because I would have to work. I would have to work on the estate. I used to get a pay packet from my father. He used to like, I would, yeah, it was a certain number of hours worked and I would, I would.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
He, I was his employee. And, and so I just would, every evening, every Saturday, I'd, I'd have to work on this. I had to weed the seed beds, do, you know, later I'd do more physical things. So that I was, I was like a sort of, you know.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Yeah, it's control. All those are controlling. I think I'm now, I'm just like, I know I'm getting my hair cut tonight before I go out. I'm just, I want to run from this room right now and get it cut. It's just sort of. I don't really, but you know what I mean.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
But yeah, it's a sort of, it's an interesting sort of how you take something negative and you make it your own and you make it, you know, it's sort of like, I can have my hair as many ways as I like.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Well, I think, I mean, I feel everything about my understanding of my past and my, you know, the way that I processed and understood what had happened to me and how it affected me and how I became, you know, and how all that stuff was post being 28.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Last week, I was a little sick for a few days and it's my body telling me to slow down. And just, I think that's so great. You know, in the days that you've got off, it knows to do that. And just, and like the way that my body as a little boy,
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
didn't allow me to retain memories because it was too much to deal with and so it wasn't until I was grown up enough and I was about to become a father actually I think that was the other thing that all these things exploded and I remembered all these things and then that's when I started to sort of
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
understand and and you know and get better and also realize that oh I this person I've been is a product of all this stuff and now I don't really want to be that person I want to find it who actually I want to be as opposed to being controlled by negative by terrible things that happened so I think it was then I think it was like after age 28 I although before that I remember once actually when I was at drama school and you know when you know you there's a thing you can get uh
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Haircuts by the sort of baby hair. Yes, practice haircuts. You get them for free in school. So I went and they were and they wanted to do a color in my hair. And it was and I came out with purple hair. And I was just like, oh, my God. And I was going home for the weekend from drama school. And I thought it was past the time when my father was it wasn't, you know, I was an adult then. So he wasn't.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And so I went home and I just, I thought, oh God, so I wore entirely purple. Just sort of think that it might deflect my purple.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
I'd like a purple sweater and a purple, I just wore purple. So there's this, I'd be this kind of blood of purple and they wouldn't sort of, I don't know, but nobody said anything actually.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
hilariously but i realized i did things like that i look back and i think oh i did have sort of even before i'd sort of hair sort of i used hair as a sort of a thing but it wasn't till i mean talking about the fact that your father whilst you're screaming and crying and he's pulling you down and shearing you with sheep shears talking to other people about that you then you know It's horrible.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
And then, but also you hear other, see people's reactions and you're like, oh yeah, that's right. That was fucking insane and just awful. So I think after that, I, then that's when I started to think, oh, I can do that. I don't have to protect that person. You know, I can say that weird thing happened to me.
Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky
Alan Cumming
Right. Oh, is this when you talked about Me Too? When you did that essay? I thought that was so great because I think you spoke for a lot of people who that sort of, oh, I wonder if I'm allowed to be in this gang.