You probably didn’t realize this but there were other books that came out besides Going There on October 26. We know…wild. That day was Going There day for us here at KCM, but we had to get our hands on another memoir that came out that day.

Alan Cumming happened to release his memoir the same day, and we like to think of it as a little cute beshert [Yiddish for destined to be].

Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life is Cumming’s second memoir. And while he’s unpacked his life for us before, in 2015, this time is just a personal. He spoke to Katie about the memoir writing process on the newest episode of Next Question.

“It took me a long time cause I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do,” the theatrical legend shared with Katie. “Actually, when I started it, I thought it was going to be about me coming to America and having this new life at age 30.” Baggage chronicles Cumming’s life in Hollywood and how, since he recovered from a nervous breakdown at 28, “work has repeatedly whisked me away from personal calamities to sets and stages around the world,” the description reads. Of course, it also chronicles his love life and his recovery from the trauma that was heavily chronicled in his first memoir. Unless you’re writing a story and the story has an ending and you know plot it out, you know, like in fiction — my story is not ended. And so I had to find out what the plot was.”

This book takes place between the end of his first marriage and the beginning of his second marriage.

“I wanted to say that I’m not finished and complete and conquered. Here’s me being a bit of a hot mess a lot of the time in my life. Having a great time, having a laugh, doing all that, but concurrently with all that, also suffering and making some bad decisions,” he said. “And I think that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to normalize being a hot mess. I think it’s entirely possible to have a great successful life and also have moments when you’re just a hot mess. So that’s my ambition: to normalize hot mess-ness.”

Hear more about his ambition and the emotional experience of writing his second memoir by listening to the full episode of Next Question with Katie Couric.