Alan Cumming Digs Up Family Secrets

Note: Today's Leonard Lopate Show in on tape. This is a rebroadcast of an interview that took place on October 6th, 2014. 

When television producers in the UK invited Alan Cumming to appear on a popular celebrity genealogy show in 2010, he agreed, hoping the show would solve a family mystery about his maternal grandfather, a celebrated WWII hero who disappeared in the Far East. But as the truth of his family ancestors revealed itself, Alan learned far more than he bargained for about himself, his past, and his own father. He shares the story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career in his new memoir, Not My Father's Son.