X2 Actor Still Close With Costars 2 Decades After Being ‘Bonded in Trauma’

Alan Cumming, known for playing Nightcrawler in the X-Men franchise, revealed that even two decades after filming of X2 wrapped, he has remained in touch with his costars from the film. Cumming credited this to the mutual trauma that they experienced while filming the acclaimed superhero flick. The actor is set to reprise his role in Avengers: Doomsday, alongside many of his castmates from the film.

Alan Cumming has remained in touch with several X2 costars

Alan Cumming, who is now set to reprise his role as Nightcrawler in Avengers: Doomsday, revealed to PEOPLE at the TriBeCa Ball at the New York Academy of Art last month about how he and his castmates from his 2003 film, X2, kept in touch over the past two decades.

Cumming said that this was because of the mutual trauma they had from the famously difficult shoot.

“The ones that I did reunite with, I’ve seen them since,” Cumming told PEOPLE about reprising his role for the MCU. “I also didn’t reunite with that many because we did it all sort of separately; it was a bit of a modern way of doing things,” he continued. Further, the actor shared, “I’m very chummy with Ian [McKellan], I’ve seen Rebecca [Romijn] over the years. Patrick [Stewart], I’ve seen quite a lot. Jimmy [Marsden], I’ve seen a lot of them actually.”

Cumming added, “It’s one of those films where I think we all were so traumatized we were bonded in trauma, so we stayed in touch.” X2 became infamous for how difficult and unsafe the shooting was.

Notably, Cumming, alongside several stars from the X-Men franchise, is crossing over to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cumming said to PEOPLE at the TIME100 Gala earlier that it was “really lovely to go back to something all those years later that I never thought I was going to go back to and I actually think, ‘Oh, I really enjoyed playing this character.'”

Avengers: Doomsday premieres on December 18, 2026.

Source: Comingsoon.net