Club Cumming’s Daphne Always on Alan Cumming’s ‘special’ bar and scary state of America

Alan Cumming’s New York City bar Club Cumming is the focus of a brand new docu-reality show, Cumming to the Cabaret, airing on BBC iPlayer.

The show, from the production team behind RuPaul’s Drag Race, World of Wonder, introduces the audience to a number of key staff as the bar, including host and performer, Daphne Always.

PinkNews spoke to Daphne ahead of the show’s launch, with all six episodes available to stream on BBC iPlayer now, about what it’s like working for iconic actor Alan Cumming and life at the bar, when the queer community finds itself under constant attack from politicians and the wider population.

“It’s so special,” she told us. “I always feel really lucky. In New York, you can’t throw a stone without hitting somebody hyper talented. It’s very much that feeling of, you never know if the person pouring your drinks, like Colt, for example, is just coming off covering a show on Broadway.

“But it’s not just the talent, it’s the sweetheartedness. It’s absolutely a bar where there’s no room for drama. There’s no room for people who aren’t just here to have a good time, and get their whole life being a big old ham on stage.”

Club Cumming opened in September 2017, however Daphne had been working there when it had been a venue called Eastern Bloc.

She told us: “It was a little more grungy sort of sex bar in the East Village, with ridiculous things written all over the walls and porn always playing on the screen.

“They closed down one summer, and they renovated and opened back up as Club Cumming. Darren [Dryden, who also appears in the show] was one of the owners, and he insisted, ‘No, we’re keeping Daphne on.'”

The bar is more than just a workplace for Daphne, though, as it became a space for her to explore who she really is as a trans woman.

“At Eastern Bloc, I was very much performing in drag,” she tells us. “I had started hormones that same year.

“It was about to become Club Cumming, but I was still performing under the name Daphne Sometimes – the joke being that I was only Daphne sometimes. It was mostly your drag show, lip-sync shenanigans.

“I don’t now if oestrogen changed my skin or if I just got lazy, but I just didn’t want to wear makeup anymore, so it transitioned more into live music, and that timed very well with Club Cumming reopening.

“Then there was a piano on the stage, and it became much more of a live-singing act, where I was making my own music with my collaborator James Sheppard, who appears in episode five. It just didn’t feel like the same character, it didn’t feel like the same thing I was doing on stage anymore, so I changed it from Daphne Sometimes to Daphne Always, and the rest is history.”

The show introduces viewers to plenty of Daphne’s co-workers, including Colt and Darren, but Alan Cumming also appears.

‘Alan Cumming is an excellent host’

“He’s the best,” Daphne tells us. “It’s funny because the gravitas of, ‘Oh, it’s Alan Cumming,’ that’s always in there, because there’s a lot of respect to be had for the man.

“But he is just so unassuming, and he’s down for a good time. He’s always like, ‘Alright, what are you drinking?’ and then we get right to the party. He likes to dance and laugh, and he’s impish. He has this naughty little sense of humour about him, so it’s just always nice. It just makes it a better night at the bar.

“He’s very kind. A few times a year we’ll have these lovely little gatherings at his home. He’s an excellent host.”

The show comes not long after Cumming appeared in harrowing Channel 4 drama Tip Toe, in which he plays a bar owner who is the victim of a horrific homophobic attack.

It lands at a time when the queer community is under attack from politicians or even just the general public, and the fear is something that can seep into life at Club Cumming.

Daphne tells us: “It’s a real concern. Not this past New Year’s, but the one before, our security guy Xavier and I were having a cigarette outside. There was just a sort of a solemn mood. I guess it was 2025, going into ’25, which was just after Trump won again. There were a lot of people who were just not in a good place that summer or winter.

“I remember talking to him, and he was particularly sort of surly. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ He just said, ‘You know, all this s***’s going on, and when it goes down, I’m the one who’s between them and this door, and nobody’s getting past it.’

“It was a sobering thought. Like, yeah, that’s it. At some point, despite whatever’s going on in all of this, whatever the narratives are, at some point, it does come down to people trying to get into this place, and a dedicated security person who’s going to do his best to protect us.”

Thankfully, the club hasn’t had too much trouble, apart from a “cranky” neighbour who tried to get the bar’s cabaret license taken away. Luckily, thanks to community members, it “turned out that the thing didn’t have legs”, so nothing had to change.

One thing that may change, though, as viewers of Cumming to the Cabaret will see, is whether or not Daphne will stay at the bar.

In episode one, she suggests she may leave New York and move to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.

As well as working at the club, Daphne also tutors Latin – but she says the two roles, though very different, have some similarities.

“Teaching and performing are the same thing,” she muses. “You’re just standing in front of people, trying to get them to get on your wavelength – just the [tutoring] audience has one person in it.”

Having that second source of income is important to Daphne for a number of reasons, who says: “There are times when I want to fantasise about wanting to perform full time, and then when I do, I feel like I’m missing a nutrient. It’s really refreshing, and it keeps me grounded.

“To know that these kids that I’m helping with their miserable homework, I can be like, ‘Hey, there’s a life waiting for you on the other side of this where you’re going to get to do what you want to do, and meet your people and life a life of your own design.”

She adds: “The flexibility of having another incoming, I didn’t always have. I was full time performing because I had to prove something to myself.

“Then when I got the tutoring job, it was like, oh, I can choose what I want to do, and in fact, have some more resources to find making what I want to do better. It’s a good balance for me.”

As for whether or not she will make the move to Reykjavik for good is something viewers will have to watch to find out.

But, she tells us: “In three weeks, I will be hosting the main stage show at Pride with Go Go Starr in Reykjavik.”

Cumming to the Cabaret is a World of Wonder Production for BBC Scotland, and available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.

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