Kumail Nanjiani and Alan Cumming Reveal the Double-Edged Sword of Working With Marvel

2025 has been a mixed year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to put it mildly. They’ve had two commercial flops and one hit that may end up with an asterisk next to its name. The endless discourse over whether or not the most successful film franchise of all time is finally on the skids has only gotten more feverish this season. But Disney won’t give up on its record-breaking money maker. They’re powering forward with a new Avengers movie, titled Doomsday, that will bring back both Robert Downey Jr. and visionary filmmakers the Russo Brothers. The cast for it is epic and hopes are high for a repeat of Endgame’s massive profits. But one wonders if the franchise is learning from its past mistakes or if they are doomed to repeat them.

Alan Cumming was announced as a cast member for Doomsday, reprising his role as Nightcrawler from the original X-Men franchise. He’s one of many stars from the Fox era to join the MCU now that Disney has almost entirely monopolised the Marvel brand. For Cumming, who’s now an Emmy-winning TV host thanks to The Traitors, it’s been a healing experience. He famously had a bad time working on X2 with notorious piece of sh*t Bryan Singer, so working on a movie with directors who aren’t accused serial rapists was refreshing.

But, this being a Marvel movie, the entire thing was highly secretive, even for the actors. As Cumming told Gold Derby, ‘I did the entire film in isolation. Lots of green screen, face replacement. They even gave characters fake names. I don’t know who I was acting with half the time.’

I know this is now standard for the MCU but wow, this sounds hellish. Look, I get it, spoilers suck and with movies this highly anticipated you want to keep as much of it secret as possible. That’s harder to maintain in an era where everyone has a camera on their phone and leaks are as common as the sun rising and setting. Marvel is particularly concerned with such secrets because it needs something to spill in all the teaser trailers. But come on, this level of secret agent-esque codes and riddles is surely only good for making your film suck.

Not joining Avengers: Doomsday? Kumail Nanjiani or any of the cast of Eternals. Chloe Zhao’s cosmic addition to the MCU received middling reviews and a box office gross to match. The ensuing movies seem to ignore all of the pretty impactful story beats established in it too. Nanjiani talked about is Marvel experiences being put on pause on the Working It Out podcast. He admitted:

“I was like, ‘This is going to be my job for the next ten years.’ I signed on for six movies. I signed on for a video game. I signed on for a theme park ride. They make you sign on for all this stuff. You’re like, ‘This is the next ten years of my life. Okay, so I’ll be doing Marvel movies every year, and in between, I’ll do my own little things. Whatever I want to do.’”

Nanjiani says he has ‘no idea’ if a sequel to Eternals will ever happen, and frankly, my guess would be ‘no.’ In that podcast, he also opens up about how much it hurt for the film to do poorly and made him reassess how ‘too much of my self-esteem was tied up in other people’s reactions to my work.’ Dude, I feel you there!

I can see why the film’s underperformance so impacted Nanjiani and how it put this supposed big new step in his career on ice. Look at how many other MCU actors have had big chunks of their careers defined by these multi-film contracts. Sebastian Stan signed a nine-movie deal when he came on board as Bucky Barnes. Robert Downey Jr. practically only did Iron Man stuff for about 15 years. Nanjiani was expecting this to be a ‘first line of your obituary’ level reshaping of his work. Hell, look at the physical transformation he underwent for a role that required him to be fully clothed! Not one beefcake shot, Chloe?! Nanjiani was committed, even if Marvel wasn’t.

I wonder if Nanjiani quietly feels a bit relieved that he doesn’t have to stand on empty green-screen sets, speaking to nobody with an incomplete script in hand, now. It can’t be conducive to creating a good performance and, frankly, it makes for bad films. One of the issues many MCU fans have had with the recent phases of the franchise is rooted in wonky CGI and that uncanny sense that none of it feels or sounds real. You watch something like Thor: Love and Thunder and you can’t help but notice how disconnected everyone and everything feels from one another. Even the best actors on the planet cannot function like this for long, and visionary filmmakers, the Russo Brothers certainly aren’t talented enough to make it functional (yes, I’m still mad about The Electric State, what of it?)

Avengers: Doomsday is going to be a frightfully expensive production. RDJ is getting $80 million (and use of a private jet) for playing Dr. Doom. But aside from that, it seems to be an endless cycle of reshoots. Rebecca Romijn, who’s returning to the role of Mystique for the movie, admitted that she doesn’t know if she’s done filming her part because of reshoots and an unfinished script. That’s right: they haven’t finished the effing screenplay! This is just sheer incompetence. It’s a financial drain, a creative nightmare, and yet another symbol of how Marvel is repeating its worst tendencies rather than learning from its numerous errors. At least Nanjiani gets to eat carbs now.