Colman Domingo doesn’t follow trends—he wears what makes him feel good. The award-winning actor, director, producer, and playwright reflects on his most pivotal career moments in this episode of “For The Record.” A self-described theater kid, Colman reveals how he originally turned down the musical that would earn him his first Tony nomination, shares Zendaya's best qualities as a scene partner in 'Euphoria,' and describes what it meant to portray one of his heroes in ‘Rustin.’ Plus, he opens up about directing the sixth episode of ‘The Four Seasons,’ collaborating with Tina Fey’s signature dark humor, and crafting his Met Gala look to embody a “beautiful masculine fantasy."
Stream ‘The Four Seasons’ on Netflix.
#ColmanDomingo #TheFourSeasons #ForTheRecord #Esquire
Stream ‘The Four Seasons’ on Netflix.
#ColmanDomingo #TheFourSeasons #ForTheRecord #Esquire
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00He played it when I said to play it,
00:01and got everybody up dancing.
00:03I knew what was gonna happen.
00:04I know how to throw parties.
00:05Hi, my name is Coleman Domingo,
00:07and today I'm looking at some career highlights,
00:09and I'm gonna tell you what really went down.
00:11This is For The Record.
00:14This is the Vineyard Theater production.
00:17This is when we were off-Broadway,
00:19and The Scottsboro Boys was about
00:20nine African-American teenage boys
00:21who were wrongly accused of a crime in the 1930s.
00:24I never believed that I had any business doing musicals,
00:28but I've always said yes, and I was game.
00:30And I literally turned this musical down
00:32when they offered it to me,
00:32because I was like, oh no, I don't sing like that.
00:34I'm a character singer.
00:36And then Susan Stroman,
00:37the five-time Tony Award-winning director,
00:40she said, no, I think you have what it takes for this.
00:42I didn't grow up with the theater at all.
00:44I actually was just a nerd and shy and quiet
00:47and on the school newspaper
00:48and trying not to get beat up most of my life.
00:50Then I became a theater kid,
00:53like sophomore year in college
00:55when I took an acting class as an elective.
00:58My teacher, Chris,
00:59who changed the trajectory of my whole life
01:01by saying, I think you have a gift in this art form,
01:04and I'd be very curious if you followed it.
01:07Well, thank you, Chris.
01:10Oh, that's a picture of me and Raul.
01:13Raul is my husband,
01:15who's been my husband for 10 years,
01:17but also has been my boyfriend for 20.
01:19He's wearing a really cool Heider Ackerman jacket, vintage,
01:23and I'm wearing like a nice little Dries Van Naaten.
01:27We don't style each other,
01:28but we have very strong opinions.
01:29I have a stylist.
01:30He doesn't have a stylist
01:31because he's got a great sense of style.
01:33He's very classic.
01:34I'm sort of the one who plays with color
01:36and pattern and texture.
01:37If you look at a picture of me,
01:39Easter Sunday, 1976,
01:41that floats around the internet once in a while,
01:43you will see that I had a good sense of style.
01:44The suit that my mother was going to put me in
01:46was too small.
01:48She put it on and I grew out of it.
01:50And so I wanted to wear this red, white, and blue jacket.
01:53And my mother was just like,
01:54oh, no, no, no, that doesn't match.
01:56And I was like, yeah, but that jacket, I love it.
01:58And it makes me feel good.
01:59And she said, well, okay,
02:01wear what makes you feel good.
02:03I think as I've gotten older,
02:04I feel like what works for me
02:05is feeling effortlessly luxurious.
02:08I'm very concerned about tailoring and style,
02:11but I don't want to appear to be fussy.
02:12Even when I'm like sort of stunting on the red carpet,
02:15I always feel like I'm myself.
02:17Fear the Walking Dead.
02:18This was sort of my re-entry back into the industry,
02:21to be honest,
02:22because I thought that I had done
02:23everything I was supposed to do
02:24when I came back from London
02:25during the Scottsboro Boys.
02:27And then along came this joy of Fear the Walking Dead.
02:30Well, my new agent, Elizabeth Wiedersheim,
02:33I was just starting to be represented by her
02:34and then she got very excited about this franchise,
02:36The Walking Dead.
02:37And I said, what are you talking about?
02:38And then I started to question.
02:39I'm like, maybe she doesn't know me.
02:41Like I'm like, I'm a real theater actor.
02:43I have like respectability.
02:44So I started to poo-poo on her idea.
02:46She said, oh, this is a really cool show.
02:47It's a huge franchise, Walking Dead.
02:48I was like, I don't know what that is.
02:49But then I got the opening monologue for this character
02:53and I felt like I was reading something from Richard III.
02:55And I thought, well, this is very different television.
02:57In order to do this monologue,
02:59I knew it needed a theater actor.
03:01I can break this down in beats and size
03:03and create something that's really complex.
03:06I was a bit of a snob, to be very honest.
03:07I know I was.
03:08If the material wasn't good, I was like, I'm good.
03:11I really, and I don't know where I got this from.
03:14Like, I come from, you know, very humble inner city,
03:17West Philadelphia, working class people.
03:19But I always made decisions that were based on my soul
03:21and craft and not about money.
03:23I auditioned for this, put it on self-tape,
03:26and I got cast as a lead of this show just off of a self-tape.
03:30It was the first time that ever happened.
03:32I sort of didn't play into what I thought the genre was.
03:35And maybe that's why I got the role.
03:37This is Euphoria, another show that I think changed my career.
03:40I met Sam Levinson in the basement of a Sundance party
03:45after a film that I had there.
03:48He first wrote the role for me
03:49in his film Assassination Nation,
03:51and that gave us a baseline on how we worked together.
03:53He would send me material and say,
03:55hey, what do you think about this?
03:57Do you have any notes?
03:58And so when Euphoria was coming up,
03:59he said, I have a role based on a guy
04:02who used to be my sponsor.
04:04So he started to really write for me.
04:07I think Zendaya's best quality as a scene partner
04:10is how open she is.
04:11We slip in very deeply.
04:14It's funny because we're doing some work now
04:17on season three, and it's just easy.
04:20It's very easy to listen and respond to her.
04:24She's an observer.
04:26And that's the part that I know about myself too.
04:27I'm an observer.
04:28I think that that's her strength.
04:30Oh, this is Rustin.
04:33Rustin is a true gift.
04:35The idea that you have an opportunity
04:37to portray one of your personal heroes
04:40and sort of bring him out of the darkness
04:42of the history books and bring him to light,
04:44any actor worth his grain of salt
04:46would run to an opportunity like that.
04:48I got my first Oscar nomination playing Rustin,
04:51and I thought it was so meaningful.
04:53The moment the category came up,
04:54I sort of wandered around.
04:56I was walking, actually, in my bathroom.
04:57I saw a text from my manager, and I looked at it,
05:01and it said, congratulations, Oscar nominee.
05:04But I was looking at the feed,
05:06and they were only getting to right before my name.
05:09So the feed was coming into New York,
05:11and I got a text before my husband heard it.
05:13So I already knew, and I'm looking over at him,
05:15and it says, Coleman Domingo,
05:17and he literally lays down on the floor in tears.
05:19I didn't know how to react,
05:20so I think then I just laid on the floor in tears too.
05:22It felt like the right thing to do.
05:26Then I was greedy and got nominated again for Sing Sing.
05:31Ooh, my very first Met Gala, which was just last year.
05:35I'm wearing Willy Chavaria.
05:38I have beautiful jewelry on.
05:40I just felt like I needed to wear a cape,
05:42because Andre Leon Talley wore capes,
05:44and my buddy Chavik Bozeman wore a white cape.
05:46And I want it to feel like a dream.
05:48I want it to feel like magic.
05:50I want it to feel beautiful.
05:52And I also want to feel masculine,
05:53and I want to feel like a fantasy.
05:55So we did these dreamy, smoky eyes,
05:58where literally when she was putting on,
05:59she's like, okay, I'm going to let you look.
06:01And you got to trust me.
06:02And I was like, oh, I'm nervous.
06:03What am I going to look like now?
06:05And then she said, no, trust me, I got you.
06:07And also I'm wearing these beautiful blue,
06:10hazel-y contact lenses,
06:14which is possibly tossing to something else
06:17that I'm doing in the future.
06:19Little did I know that I would become the co-chair
06:22of the Met Gala the following year, this year.
06:24Apparently, I made a good impression, which was good.
06:26So Anna invited me back.
06:30They didn't know they needed a dance party, did they?
06:32I looked good, too.
06:34I had no idea that they would sit me
06:35in the front row of the Oscars,
06:37so you cannot not see me.
06:40They said, we're going to do a moment
06:41on a commercial break.
06:42You have about a minute 20.
06:44I said, great.
06:45I can speak for 20,
06:45and I needed one minute for a dance party.
06:48They said, ooh, good song.
06:49I said, Frankie Beverly, Before I Let Go.
06:51It's the ultimate barbecue song.
06:53Will everybody know it?
06:54I'm like, it doesn't matter, but you'll feel it.
06:55And I found a high point in the song.
06:57I got the DJ to do it.
06:58The DJ tried to question my choice
07:00and thought, shouldn't we play it from the beginning?
07:02I said, I'm telling you, the high point, trust me.
07:04I know how to throw a party.
07:06So he listened.
07:07He played it when I said to play it
07:09and got everybody up dancing.
07:10I knew what was going to happen.
07:12I know how to throw a party, so I had a good time.
07:14The last one is actually the episode that I directed
07:18of the Four Seasons.
07:19Four Seasons is a gift that I think I needed after,
07:22you know, we say work like Sing Sing or Rustin
07:24or Color Purple, which is like some real complex soul work.
07:28I think I deserved an opportunity
07:30to just do a half hour comedy, to just laugh
07:32and wear a really cute outfit,
07:34and I look really cute in this picture.
07:35Tina has the darkest, wittiest sense of humor.
07:39And I love it, because you never see it coming.
07:41Because she looks very straight-laced,
07:43but then she'll get you with a zinger,
07:45and it's always, she really is masterful with comedy.
07:48Will Forte is just a nutball.
07:50He's nuts, and I love him.
07:52I'm always looking at him like, what are you thinking?
07:54Because it's always a little left
07:56of what you think he's going to think.
07:57And then Marco Cavani is just nothing but love
08:00and really silly.
08:01Who I think is just a natural storytelling
08:03is Carrie Kenny Silver.
08:05She's a discovery.
08:06She's so sweet, and she's got the sweetest
08:09sort of like baby doll voice,
08:11and then she drops it into this deeper voice
08:13that's there too.
08:14She's like 20 people wrapped up in one,
08:16and you never know what you're going to get.
08:18I think she's the best storyteller out of all of us.
08:20She does a great story.
08:22Thanks for watching, be sure to watch
08:24The Four Seasons only on Netflix.