Actor, playwright, director, and Oscar Best Actor nominee Colman Domingo joins InStyle to reveal 9 of his most prized possessions. Discover the Colman's stories behind these personal keepsakes, such as heartfelt memories with his parents and why a magnet from Saint Paul de Vence, France has such a historical significance to him.
We also find out why Colman reserves a unique cologne from Vienna for only the most special occasions. Don’t miss this intimate look at the meaningful treasures that shape his life!
We also find out why Colman reserves a unique cologne from Vienna for only the most special occasions. Don’t miss this intimate look at the meaningful treasures that shape his life!
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PeopleTranscript
00:00Hi, my name is Coleman Domingo, and today I'm going to take you through some of the
00:03items that are truly meaningful to me.
00:06This ring is sapphire and diamond, and it belonged to my stepfather.
00:14And my stepfather passed in 2006.
00:17I didn't keep a lot of things.
00:19I'm not someone who keeps a lot of things.
00:22My other relatives wanted stuff.
00:24I kept my stepfather's trench coat, and I kept this ring.
00:29I didn't even know that if it was real or not.
00:32I just knew that my stepfather always wore it.
00:35He wore it on this finger that I eventually grew into, and it fits me perfectly.
00:42So this is anyone who wants to know, I'm always wearing this ring, and I went and got it appraised
00:48and found out that it was from 1942, 1943.
00:52My stepfather, he always taught me to be a man of my word.
00:55He said, don't tell someone something that you won't actually do.
01:01He used to sand hardwood floors, and I would work with him during the summers.
01:05And I remember this one time, because I like working with him, because I like to also make
01:08money.
01:09Because anybody who knows me, I was a hustler since I was 13 years old.
01:13I was like, anytime I can make some money and do a job, I'll do it, which is why I stay
01:17booked and busy.
01:20So I was with him one day, and I assume he got up, and his back was hurting.
01:25He said, listen, this is going to be the last summer you work with me.
01:29I was like, why?
01:30I thought I did something wrong.
01:31He said, no, because I don't want you doing this work.
01:33This work's not for you.
01:35I want you to see these hands, and he would do this to his hands.
01:38And at calluses, he says, I don't want you to have hands like that.
01:40I want you to have soft hands.
01:42And I want you to use your mind, hit those books, and so you don't have to do this back
01:49breaking work.
01:50He had a seventh grade education, and so he had to work hard and do blue collar, strong
01:56work.
01:57He didn't want me doing this kind of work.
01:59He wanted me to use my brain to elevate and do something else.
02:03This is one of my most precious items, and this is my mother, Edith, and my stepfather,
02:14Clarence.
02:15I wonder if he's wearing this ring.
02:18His hand is tucked in, so he might be wearing this ring.
02:21I like to imagine that he is.
02:23This is one of their first dates, I believe, in around 1980.
02:27This is after my mother was a single woman, single mother for many years after separating
02:33from my dad.
02:34And so they got set up on a date by a mutual friend of theirs.
02:40And this is them looking so sweet and turning out at a bar.
02:45This image has never been in a frame.
02:48I don't know why.
02:49I like it frayed and strange, a little torn, and it sits on my desk.
02:55And I like to just imagine what this early love was like.
02:58They're no longer with us.
02:59They both passed away in 2006.
03:03But their memory lives on because their love lives on in me.
03:07It's happy times, you know?
03:08We look at happy times.
03:10And we've got to carry that with us.
03:12You know, again, it's not just about us.
03:14It's about all the things that have happened for me even recently in my life and career
03:18and all is because of these two people.
03:21They poured it all into me and to my siblings and wanted us to be good humans and make a
03:26difference and use our brain.
03:32And yeah, so I owe everything to these two.
03:34So I keep this as a reminder.
03:41This is just a little cat that my husband Raul bought in Canada.
03:48And this sits in my living room.
03:50I travel a lot.
03:52And Raul calls me the cat.
03:55So the cat is always there in the living room.
03:57You know, the cat's always looking around and watching over the house.
04:01One in the home.
04:02So there's a version of me.
04:03Apparently he said, this looks just like you.
04:06And I think it does because it's brown.
04:08It's lean.
04:09He's got a little mustache, kind of spry, you know, he's kind of fit too.
04:12I like that.
04:13Like he's been working out.
04:14So that's me.
04:16Now I've been with my husband now for almost 20 years.
04:19So it seems very sort of archaic the way it happened.
04:21You know, it was a Craigslist misconnections, you know, where I thought I was going to write
04:26a misconnection after this moment when we walked past each other in a Walgreens in Berkeley.
04:32And then I went to Craigslist and he already wrote one for me.
04:34Even though technology was involved, it still feels very analog.
04:39Because it was there was no image or didn't know what I did or anything like that.
04:43It was just like, hey, I saw you and there was a feeling and I wish and hope to find you.
04:50And that's it.
04:51It was electric.
04:52It was electricity.
04:53It was a feeling that we couldn't explain.
04:56And I believe in that.
04:57I believe that I've always believed that that's the way you find love.
05:00I don't know what I would do if I was trying to find love now.
05:03I don't know.
05:04I'm not for the apps, I think, you know.
05:06It's funny.
05:07I was with a friend of mine and he was showing me how this works.
05:10And he was swiping and everything.
05:11I'm like, what about?
05:12And he swiped too fast.
05:13I'm like, oh my God, now they're going forever.
05:14What if that's supposed to be the love of your life?
05:16You swipe too fast.
05:17So I will go next to this little magnet of St. Paul de Vance.
05:25St. Paul de Vance is a little town in the south of France.
05:30And I went there because I am a James Baldwin lover and I like to retrace Baldwin steps.
05:38And I went to this, you know, restaurant and hotel where Baldwin used to go and apparently
05:44rail people till all times of night eating food with his friends.
05:49I would walk the streets and look at this incredible village and think, wow, this is where Baldwin
05:54spent many of his last years on this planet.
05:57I wanted to just walk and see what he saw and understand why he needed sort of this peace
06:03in the world.
06:05The city is so charming and beautiful with little cobblestone streets and it's kind of
06:10tiered up into the mountain.
06:12It's really beautiful.
06:13It's really very simple.
06:14People seem very friendly too.
06:15Any time I walked around people were just like, you know, I discovered Baldwin when I was
06:23about junior in college when I was like, oh, James Baldwin, you would hear different quotes
06:29or, but then if you take a deep dive into his writing, there was a short story that stayed
06:35with me called Sonny's Blues.
06:37Especially as a black man, as a queer man, as a man who loves and I don't know, is curious
06:44about the world.
06:45He was my North Star.
06:47He was giving me words for things that I couldn't even articulate myself.
06:51How I felt, how I thought about things, how I examined society and commercials or what we're
06:58fed.
06:59And I always go back to Baldwin.
07:01Always.
07:02Here's my next item.
07:04Everyone who knows me knows that I love to smell good.
07:06I developed that from my husband actually who loves, he's got an incredible nose.
07:12We usually play sort of a game in the morning whenever I put on something because I have maybe 70 different fragrances.
07:21And I will put something on and try to, you know, stump him.
07:25What is this?
07:26Usually he guesses nine times out of 10 what it is.
07:29This is Lang Ling.
07:33And why is this so precious to me?
07:35And why is there so little of it left?
07:38It's because I bought this in an airport in Vienna.
07:41It was during my 50th birthday trip to Europe.
07:45I spent three weeks in Europe and I just was just going with the wind.
07:49I bought it.
07:50We bought tickets to London and then I thought, we'll just go where the weather takes us.
07:54And I decided to go to Vienna because I'd never been to Vienna.
07:56Why?
07:57I don't know.
07:58So I went to see where, you know, where Mozart roamed the streets.
08:01And I thought, oh, this is great.
08:02It was wonderful.
08:03And I thought, if I liked it, I'll get some more.
08:04You know, you think you could get anything online?
08:06No, you can't.
08:07Not this.
08:08It's only available in Vienna.
08:11Okay.
08:12I think not even just Austria.
08:13I think just in Vienna.
08:14So I've got to go back to that airport and find it because I've tried to get it shipped,
08:19delivered, you name it.
08:20Maybe somebody out there can help me if you can.
08:22I need more of this because it's number eight, which is my favorite.
08:26And I wear this only on special occasions since there's only so little left.
08:31The last time I wore this was to the Oscars.
08:34It's very fresh and there's little traces of oud in there and it's bright.
08:40I like things that are bright and sometimes a little grassy.
08:43But I'm not afraid of, like, some osmanthus in it as well.
08:47As you can tell, I'm a bit of a snob, but I do know about sands, okay?
08:50The next thing that I would like to share is this is a little sugar cookie.
08:56But it's a little more special than a sugar cookie.
08:59It was given, it was in my hotel room at the Mark Hotel just a few months ago when I went
09:06to the Met Gala.
09:07It was my first trip to the Met Gala and it was such a special, magical, magical night
09:13that I wanted to, I took every little thing that will help me remember this.
09:16I wanted to remember how it smelled, how it felt, how I felt.
09:20And this sugar cookie probably will never be eaten, but it will harden but remain sweet,
09:26you know, for the memory.
09:29It's magical.
09:30I mean, beyond the red carpet, everyone sees what the red carpet's like.
09:32It's amazing.
09:33You look amazing.
09:34You feel amazing.
09:35But then you go inside.
09:36That's where the real magic starts.
09:38You feel like you're part of an art installation.
09:41You look like art.
09:43You're walking through art.
09:45It's magical.
09:46When you're walking up the steps to the Met Gala, there were people dressed as fairies and
09:52nymphs, lying on the stairs, aligning the stairs as you walked up.
09:57Everyone was eating an apple.
09:58People were looking.
09:59They're whispering.
10:00They're making you feel like you're the most special being walking up those stairs.
10:06And so you feel like you're, I literally was wearing a cape, so I felt like I was floating.
10:09It really was the most magical night of my life.
10:12Let's go for this.
10:16This is not only a bingo card.
10:21This is a bingo card that comes from a movie that I did in 1999 called King of the Bingo
10:26Game.
10:27Does that sound familiar?
10:29Because for anyone who follows me on Instagram, my name is King of Bingo.
10:33Now you know why.
10:34So I came up with that moniker because, you know, you're trying to get handles of things
10:39and, you know, when Facebook started up and this is after MySpace, everybody, you start
10:43to have to get a name.
10:45So I was like, well, what is it going to be?
10:46And I was like, I think I'm the king of bingo because I'm the king of luck.
10:50And so this is the winning card and this is exactly, is it the way it was in the movie?
10:57I think no, but I won.
11:00Oh, this isn't closed all the way because this was the final one.
11:04This was the final one, 71, where I won bingo.
11:08So that's always a little open.
11:10So we'll keep it open a little bit, all right?
11:15This odd little, you know, paper mache figurine, which is a Daruma doll.
11:23And this Daruma doll I bought on a trip, my first trip to Japan.
11:27And what you do is it's good for wishes.
11:30It's funny because it actually, when I look close up, it looks a little sad and in some
11:34strange way.
11:35And it has something around, I think it's carrying something, I don't know, but apparently
11:38you're supposed to hold it and put a wish inside of it, you know, with your thoughts.
11:44And your wish will come true.
11:45I won't tell you what my wish was, but I did wish something.
11:49It lives in my living room on a small little shelf next to one of my low couches where I
11:56sit and I just, I take naps actually.
11:59And this is over.
12:00Maybe it's over there, like listening to my dreams in some way.
12:04Or whispering crazy things into my head.
12:06I have no idea.
12:07This is, this is, I didn't realize it was a precious item until I saw it.
12:18And this is something that was handed down from my mother to my sister, to me, because
12:25you can see little bits of writing in here inside.
12:29It's a little Bible.
12:31And I remember when I was a kid, mother was like, you always got to take your little Bible
12:35with you.
12:36Just always got to have some space for the word.
12:39Now she was spiritual.
12:40She wasn't religious, but she did believe in carrying, you know, the good book around.
12:45I think she used to say that everything you really want to know is actually in the Bible.
12:48Yeah, you know.
12:50Oh, what is this?
12:52April 4th, 1976.
12:57That's how old it is.
12:58Isn't that something?
12:59And wait a minute.
13:00There's something in here.
13:02Okay, you want to, I'll give you this because apparently I used to write dreams and wishes
13:13and things and put it in the Bible.
13:14And I didn't even know it was back here.
13:16This is dreams and whispers for 2000.
13:19Number one, be a beautiful person inside out.
13:22Number two, become spiritually sound.
13:24Number three, earn $100,000 in acting work.
13:28Number four, act with ACT, The Public, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Seattle Rep, Mark Taper Forum,
13:34The Goodman, The Huntington, and Off Broadway.
13:37Pretty much done all of these.
13:39Number five, direct for the Kennedy Center, Berkeley Rep, and begin a great regional theater
13:45directing career.
13:46Hmm.
13:47See, I was a kid at the theater.
13:48That's all I wanted to do.
13:49I don't know what I'm doing in film and TV.
13:52Number six, take loving care with my relationships of love.
13:58Number seven, move to New York successfully.
14:03I did.
14:04And then I left successfully.
14:07Number eight, get out of debt.
14:10I got out of debt.
14:12I probably got some more, but I pay my bills.
14:14Number nine, take my loved ones on a trip to an island.
14:18Did I do that?
14:21I've taken loved ones other places, never to an island.
14:24I'm not an island person, but yeah, you know.
14:27Number 10, find a new love and appreciation for my spirit.
14:34That was 10 Things I Wanted in 2000.
14:37You know, I hope you guys enjoy learning a little bit more about me and these precious items.
14:43And I thank you, InStyle, for having me.
14:46Thanks for watching.