Colman Domingo loves cutting a dash on the red carpet. Last year, British Vogue declared that “there is no reputable best dressed list that doesn’t include” the 55-year-old actor, writer and director. But Domingo also sees turning a look as part of his job. “I’ve always admired those old-school actors like Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier,” he says. “Style is about making people feel something, about telling a story.”
On a sunny Saturday in January, Domingo is speaking to NME over Zoom from a hotel room in Hertfordshire, where he’s shooting Edgar Wright’s new film The Running Man. Domingo plays the host of “a very dark, dystopian murderous game show” in the upcoming thriller based on a Stephen King novel. “I wouldn’t say it’s a remake,” Domingo says, referring to the 1987 The Running Man movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. “This is closer to the book.”
He’s relaxed and chatty as he kicks back at the spacious room’s desk, but he’s still looking pretty fabulous in a fluffy green sweater and red neckerchief. “Especially now that I’m an even more public-facing person, I’m conscious that I represent myself and my work,” he says.
Domingo’s words can sound more earnest and self-aggrandising when they’re written down, but he doesn’t lack humour. “Everyone wants a selfie now, so I have to wear a fit even when I go to the airport,” he says. Really, but airport lighting is horrible? “Oh, terrible!” he replies with a laugh, gesturing to the skin under his eyes. “You gotta put a little concealer on!”
“Even more public-facing” is a classy way of saying he’s made it onto Hollywood’s A-list. A few days after this interview, Domingo will hear he’s up for Best Actor at the Oscars for the second year in a row. This time, he’s in the running for his wrenchingly tender performance in Sing Sing, a prison drama he helped to shape. “From start to finish, I got to put my fingerprints on every frame,” he says.
In 2024, Domingo was nominated for his tremendously empathetic performance in Rustin, a biopic of queer civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. “That sort of catapulted me to leading man status,” Domingo says. He also became, after Ian McKellen in 1998’s Gods And Monsters, only the second out gay man to be nominated for playing a gay character.
“I’d like to pull the curtain back on my Euphoria character”
Before Rustin, Domingo made his mark with supporting roles in acclaimed movies (2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk; 2020’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and on TV in Euphoria. In 2022, he won an Emmy for his performance as Ali, a recovering drug addict who mentors Zendaya’s troubled high schooler Rue. Is he returning for the long awaited third season? “I know we’re gonna start shooting soon, but I don’t have scripts yet,” he says.
This might sound evasive if Domingo weren’t so upfront about the character arc he wants. “I’ve told [Euphoria‘s creator] Sam Levinson already,” he confides. “Ali is always in service to Rue; we never see him just in service to himself. I’d like to pull the curtain back and see what Ali’s life is when he goes home.”
In Sing Sing, Domingo pulls the curtain back on an aspect of prison life we don’t see in cheesy jailbird movies about escape plans and drug rings. He plays John “Divine G” Whitfield, a man wrongfully convicted for murder who finds solace in an acting troupe led by inmates.
Sing Sing isn’t only based on a true story; it also features that story’s key players. The vast majority of Domingo’s castmates are formerly incarcerated men who participated in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The real-life Divine G and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who appears in the film as himself, have also been Oscar-nominated for their contributions to the screenplay.
As Divine G, Domingo really gets under the skin of an erudite and dignified man who fully believes that the RTA can help his fellow inmates. In an agonising scene, Divine G speaks passionately about acting’s potential to unlock a person’s inner feelings, only to be asked by a sceptical parole board officer: “Are you acting now?” Domingo conveys, heartbreakingly, just how much this question crushes him.
“The parole board officer represents not only the prison system, but also the world [at large] and cynics,” Domingo says. “They just can’t believe it when they see someone being so sincere right in front of their face.” Domingo says district attorneys and prosecutors who attended Sing Sing screenings approached him afterwards to say the film made them confront their own “unconscious biases that may have been built up by cynicism”.
Domingo filmed Sing Sing in an 18-day window between playing an abusive husband in the movie of Broadway musical The Color Purple, itself based on a seminal Alice Walker novel, and Rustin. This ruled out his usual intense preparation. Domingo said in 2022 that he “may put myself through my own rehearsals of 30 to 50 hours for a few scenes” of Euphoria.
But Domingo, who is credited as Sing Sing’s executive producer, says director Greg Kwedar gave him “the gift of bringing every part of myself as a creator” to the project. “Yes, I’m an actor in it and a producer, but also I’ve shaped some of the direction and writing. I’ve shaped some of the other performances, too,” he says. Many of his castmates had never acted on camera before.
“It’s scary as an actor to show more than you’re used to”
“Part of their work in the RTA program was to be as vulnerable and stripped bare as possible so they could invite some healing and transformation,” he says. “So I thought, ‘Well, that makes sense for me as a performer too.’ I don’t think I’ve ever charged myself with that before. It’s scary as an actor to show more than you’re used to.”
Because Domingo felt so emotionally “threadbare” during the shoot, he couldn’t face watching Sing Sing in its entirety until he forced himself on a transatlantic flight. “I do see a lot of myself throughout the film,” he admits.
Domingo was never destined to become the kind of actor who just rocks up knowing his lines. At 21, he quit his journalism degree in Philadelphia, the city where he was born and raised, and made a giant leap. “I moved to San Francisco to become an actor and in the 10 years I was there I became a multi-hyphenate artist: a writer, director and theatre producer,” he says, sounding grateful rather than grand.
Domingo then moved to New York, where he was surprised when fellow creatives expected him to “pick a lane”. Instead, he told them “I do all of it” and continued to “forge my own path”. Domingo has since proven his versatility by creating numerous plays and co-writing Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, which opened on Broadway in 2018.
Eight years on, Domingo says he “always saw [the musical] as a piece of cinema”. The key, he believes, is “finding the right actress” – and he has someone in mind. “Kelly Rowland would be phenomenal,” he says. “There’s something about the spark and voice of Donna Summer that I think Kelly has too. You need a superstar to play a superstar.”
Domingo and his husband Raúl now live in Los Angeles, a move that made sense after he was cast in Fear The Walking Dead in 2015. But really, the crunch point for his career came a year earlier when he missed out on a small role in 1920s-set series Boardwalk Empire. Domingo smashed his audition to play the maître d’ of a Black-owned nightclub, but was told afterwards that a Prohibition-era maître d’ would be lighter-skinned than he is. He said last year: “That’s when I lost my mind [and thought] I can’t take it anymore.”
He contemplated quitting acting altogether. “And that wasn’t bullshit,” he says today. “I’d been nominated for an Olivier and a Tony award for [stage musical] The Scottsboro Boys, and I was like: ‘Maybe that was the best it was meant to be.’’’ Domingo felt his screen career had plateaued and he “just wasn’t willing to go backwards”.
He only reconsidered after giving a new management team six months to help him turn things around. Eleven years later, they’re still working together and Domingo is completely booked up for the next three years. His upcoming projects include Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic from Training Day director Antoine Fuqua.
“That’s when I lost my mind [and thought] I can’t take it anymore”
Two weeks after this interview, Puck reports that Fuqua is having to reshoot the film’s final act, which is said to depict sexual abuse allegations that Jackson’s estate has banned from being dramatised. Distributors Lionsgate have yet to comment, but if Domingo has any inkling of the story about to break, he doesn’t show it. He speaks purposefully about portraying the singer’s tarnished father, Joe Jackson, a cruel disciplinarian who was accused of physical and emotional abuse by Michael, and of sexual abuse by daughter La Toya.
Domingo notes that the single-minded patriarch gave “all he had” to help his kids become successful. “Who was that person?” he ponders. “You don’t do that because you don’t like your children. You do it because you love them deeply.”
Other projects are less heavy. If his managers had said that one day, legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour would ask him to co-chair the Met Gala, would Domingo have believed them? “Not at all!” he replies with a laugh. “I only went to the Met Gala for the first time last year, but apparently I made an impression. One thing I do know is that I’m good in a room. I come in with a lot of kindness, energy and enthusiasm.”
Co-hosting this year’s Met Gala alongside Pharrell Williams, A$AP Rocky and Lewis Hamilton really cements Domingo’s incredible rise. Earlier in his career, an agent told him he was “a character actor in a leading man’s body” and predicted it would “take a while for the industry to catch up”. Now it finally has, Domingo has no intention of choosing a lane as the New Yorkers advised.
“Everything I have, it’s because I haven’t put any limitations on myself,” he says. “I didn’t know where this career would go, to be honest, but I’m really happy with where it is.”