Tag: Gus

EXCLUSIVE: Colman Domingo is joining the cast of Gus Van Sant’s hostage thriller Dead Man’s Wire after completing his scenes for Edgar Wright’s The Running Man.

The title of Wright’s film is an apt for an actor who is doing the reverse of Phillip C. McGraw’s dictum that ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint,’ by jetting from London on Monday to a devastated Los Angeles, then on to Kentucky next weekend to join Nosferatu’s Bill Skarsgard in Dead Man’s Wire in Louisville.

Austin Kolodney’s original screenplay for Dead Man’s Wire is based on the story of Tony Kirtsis, who one frigid day in February 1977 took Indianapolis mortgage broker Dick Hall hostage in his office. He attached a steel wire, that was hooked to the barrel of a sawed-off, double barrel shotgun, around his captive’s neck. Deadline revealed news of the production and the casting of Skarsgard, along with Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery, last month.

“This guy was just in dire straits, holding people hostage and speaking to a radio announcer,” says Domingo, who will play the broadcaster in question. He’s speaking to Deadline in the middle of an awards season that has propelled the actor’s performance in A24 flick Sing Sing towards Academy Award contention. “That’s the only person he felt like he could communicate with. He’d listened to him every day and I sort of guide him not to kill people.” 

After Dead Man’s Wire, it’s onto the third season of HBO’s Euphoria, shooting eight episodes with Zendaya, Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney. “Everybody’s excited to get back to work. That’s taken a lot time to put together,” says Colman.

It’s been three years of waiting, in fact. “There’s been lots of rewriting and rethinking of what it is, and then it’s about wrangling everyone’s schedules — whether it’s Jacob‘s and Sydney or my schedule and Zendaya’s schedule. Oh, everyone’s become mega stars now,” he laughs.

Colman adds, “It’s going to be incredible storytelling. I don’t know if [what I heard] made it to the final pages, but from what I was told, it’s really exceptional. It’s human.”

Spielberg Collaboration

Euphoria’s followed by Steven Spielberg’s new, as yet untitled, new movie. “I can’t tell you anything,” he says as I’m about to open my mouth.

“I will tell you this,” he decides. “I finished reading the script and I bawled. I thought it was one of the most beautiful scripts about our humanity. I think it was just the most beautiful film about our humanity, and I literally cried because Steven Spielberg believes in the possibility of the human beings we could be. That’s what I’ll tell you.”

Of course, I push for more.

“From what’s out there in the world, it is an untitled sci-fi experience. You know Steven’s always concerned about the stars and the moon, so I think that’s what I can tell you,” he says, lacing his hands together. 

“Are you an astronaut,” I speculate?

“Possibly. You never know,” he says chuckling.

Shakespeare was into the stars and the moon, as well. I tell Domingo that I was struck by the soliloquy the actor chose to recite at the top of Sing Sing, where he plays John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield, a man incarcerated at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in Ossining, New York, for a crime he didn’t commit. The film, directed by Greg Kwedar, who also wrote the script with Clint Bentley, follows Divine G’s participation in Rehabilitation Through the Arts, known as R.T.A.

When I rewatched the movie ahead of my meeting with Domingo, I somehow experienced it differently from when I first watched it ages ago. I realized that the text Domingo’s Divine G performed as Lysander, one of the lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream — “Swift as a shadow/short as any dream/Brief as the lightning in the collided night/That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth/And ‘ere a man hath power to say, ”Behold!”/And ere a man hath power to say, ’Behold!’/The jaws of darkness  do devour it up… “ — is the key to the film.

“That’s exactly why I chose that monologue to start,” he agrees. “That is the key. Since our film takes so many cues from Shakespeare, I thought the first line of a character in any Shakespeare play will tell you everything you need to know about him.” Usually, their entrance line in some way, shape or form, he observes, “will tell you a lot about the crisis of faith or the questions that the character has.”

Domingo explains that in that moment we find Divine G “in the height of his artistic journey in a hope-filled place,” but that juxtaposing his splendid robes on moment with his prison greens asks the question of how he exists in the world. “He’s holding onto hope and art,” adds Domingo.

“He’s holding onto language, ideas and imagination, and the container of prison is trying to beat it out of him. It gets me emotional anytime I think about it, because I know I can sit here and talk to you clearly about it, because you know about the container of us living in the world as Black men, a world tries to constrain us. We’re saying, ‘No, I’m liberated from that, every single day. Every step of our being is in defiance of the way the world is set up for us.’”

After seeing the film, some found his performance so compelling that people would ask him, indirectly, whether he’d ever been incarcerated. ”I’m like, ‘No! I’m a Black man in the world. I know how this man feels.’ It’s not so foreign, which is why I know I put more of myself into this film than I’ve ever put into any other film.

“I needed to lift the mask off of Colman and pour him fully into this. I wasn’t allowed to do that with Rustin; I had to build a character. With The Color Purple, I had to build a character and infuse it, and find its way and its heartbeat. But with this, I had to find my heart in John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield’s heart and pull him together.”

We’re practically alone, the two of us, in the charming Bistro Bardot, a hostelry that was once a famous old pub in Wapping, East London. He’s holding back tears now as he talks about his role in the film. “It’s me with all my fears,” he continues. “What would happen if I was wrongfully accused of a crime just walking down the wrong street at the wrong time, and the system is set up to put me away, and not to believe me, not to trust my word?”

Awards Trail

Domingo’s one of the few professional actors in Sing Sing, along with Sound of Metal’s Paul Raci. The bulk of the company consists of those who had previous experience performing with R.T.A.. One is Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin, who’s a revelation in the picture. He and Domingo have been nominated for supporting and lead actor BAFTA awards — Maclin also shares an adapted screenplay nomination for the film.

Domingo says he’ll return to London for the London Film Critics Circle Awards and the BAFTAs. He has the Critics Choice and SAG Awards upcoming in LA as well.  

Following a tricky introduction, ‘Divine G’, in a magnanimous act, decides to assist ‘Divine Eye’ in his R.T.A. acting endeavours and in helping him prepare for his parole board hearing. “Even though he’s challenged by him, at the end of the day, he finds it more joyful to be of service to him as a well,” says Domingo.

The irony of that is devastating because ‘Divine G’ doesn’t know how to get himself outta that place. When I watched him go up for parole, I could feel the volcano inside both the character and the actor begin to rumble. How did he hold it back, I ask?

“I said to myself to hold it back,” responds Domingo. “I know that character. I know the person who feels like I have to measure my anger or my fury or my frustration sometimes, and always choose the high road. I know that very clearly. Please, I know that even when it comes to the way people will value or not value your work. I will just do what I need to do.”

But does he get angry, I ask?

“I get frustrated like everybody else, and at some point. I can only take so much. I know the things that boil and boil over when you’re not being seen or you’re not being heard, or you are constantly being looked over or passed over. You always try to take stock, but at some point, you want to lose your whole mind. But I think that I’m a very measured person because that’s the way I am,” he says flatly.

There are great men he greatly admires. “Whether it’s Ralph Ellison or whether it’s James Baldwin or Nat King Cole, I always think that these are guys who choose grace, but they have everything in them to be a Huey P. Newton or a Malcolm X.”

You know what, though? Colman Domingo’s having the last laugh on those who ever doubted him.

He’ll be on the Gus Van Sant movie set this weekend; he’s got Euphoria, the Spielberg picture. You’re gonna make your feature directing debut on Scandalous about Sammy Davis Jr and Kim Novak, to be portrayed by Rye Lane’s David Jonsson and Anyone But You’s Sydney Sweeney, I tell him. There’s the Nat King Cole Biopic he’s setting up to star in and direct next year. In a similar key, there’s the musical he wrote with Patricia McGregor, to be directed by McGregor, Lights Out: Nat King Cole, starting performances at New York Theatre Workshop in March, starring Dulé Hill (The West Wing) and Daniel J. Watts, who played Ike Turner in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, as Sammy Davis Jr.

There’s the Tina Fey comedy show he’s shot called The Four Seasons, based on the Alan Alda movie. There’s crime thriller The Madness, in which he stars, on Netflix. Fear the Walking Dead is on Prime Video on an endless loop, and there’s stuff so far off in the future he dare not tell me about. He was filming The Running Man at Leavesden Studios until last weekend. Edgar Wright chose him for that. And later this year, he’ll be seen portraying Joe Jackson, Michael Jackson’s father, in Antoine Fuqua’s Michael.

Domingo and Indhu Rubasingham, the National Theatre’s incoming Artistic Director have been talking, he reveals, “about leaving a window open in the fall of 2026 to do “something” there. “I haven’t been on stage in London since Scottsboro Boys twelve years ago and I think my first show will be back in London at the National Theatre,” he affirms. He wants it to be “something special and impactful” and allows to “have fun.”

Oh, and Domingo, the red carpet maestro, is a house ambassador with Valentino now. “[Creative director] Alessandra Michele has been creating custom pieces for me to wear,” he says.

Doors once closed have been flung open all over the place for Colman Domingo, I say.

He concedes that “in a funny way, you’re right. I guess I’m having a bit of a last laugh.”

Sipping a Negroni, he adds that “just by existing and being and working hard, he represents all of the people who’ve worked regional theater, off-Broadway, and taught themselves to write and direct in the face of doors slamming and opportunities denied. “I represent all of those actors and artists,” he says,” emotion building. “I did not know that this was available to me. I just didn’t know, and now it feels like I have a greater opportunity to have even more impact.”

Last month he had a conversation with his team as he considered his next move. “I thought, ‘well, I want to have even more impact’. “And I woke up and I thought, ‘Well, I think the word is mogul!’”

‘Mogul’ is a good word, I say, guffawing at the audacity of it all.

“I tell you why,” he says. “I feel like it’s about having impact with many industries. I think that if people are willing to invest in me and the Coleman Domingo brand, I have the heart and the aptitude to tell them where to go because I care about people, I care about Black and brown men, I care about education. And by being a mogul, I can actually do that.

“That’s bigger than just being an artist. It’s having an effect on economy, which is why being a producer on Sing Sing shows I can actually make it happen. I can tell financiers what to do with their money and what will make an impact.”

It’s unlikely, I suggest, that Sing Sing would’ve have been made, at least not anytime soon, had it not been for his involvement.

“It absolutely would not have been made,” he concurs. “We had to agree on a plan on how to do it, which was a very community-based way of making sure that everyone above and below the line were paid the same rate, because it made sense for this film. You’re like, ‘How can you have people with their lived experience not benefiting?’”

So, everyone got paid the same. Including you? “Including me,” he replies.

“But I had to agree to it. I remember I brought this up to my team, and they were unsure. I said, “I think this makes sense. We’re going to make this as a collective and as a collective, we should all benefit from it.’  That means we’re all taking a chance. If it fails, if it doesn’t gain anyone one cent, that’s all fine. We all did this because we want to do this. We felt this story matters. That means that person who’s cleaning the toilet gets paid the same amount of money as I do.”

They were paid a daily rate, though he can’t recall how much. “Let’s say it was $600. Everyone got that. If you worked a certain amount of days, you got more, and so basically your equity, once we sold the film will break down in that way. You have this amount of points per days you’ve worked compared to that person.” Essentially, their share of any profit would be aligned to how many days they had accrued. 

Although as a producer through the Edith Productions single he runs with husband Raul Domingo, “We have one more point or something, one more daily rate. But, pretty much, it’s as democratic as I’ve ever seen.”

Making Sign Sing wasn’t about the money for him, but ensuring it exists, just as was the case for Domingo with The Color Purple and Rustin. I’m like, I could afford to actually do this film as well, to be honest, and do it in a very fair way, which is beautiful. This is what those big budget films afford you to be able to do, so you can actually support others.”

A Producers Guild Award nomination would have been “a meaningful acknowledgement that this film was made against all odds in a truly democratic way,” he says with evident disappointment. “We’re bucking the system and the trend, and fellow producers did not want to acknowledge that.”

The Return Of Trump

We’re speaking on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration and I ask Domingo if he’s at all concerned about the noises one has been hearing about possible interference in the screen industry from MAGA forces. 

He shakes his head, and reveals that he had a “beautiful conversation” late one night at a restaurant, the name of which he won’t disclose, with some friends and colleagues, including Natasha Lyonne, Leonardo DiCaprio, Zoe Kravitz, Zachary Quinto and Jeremy O. Harris. 

“Anytime I’m in New York, I bring people together. We sat and enjoyed each other’s company, and then we talked about how we are now the studios, the individuals.“

How so? “Because if we believe it can happen, and if we make it happen, it’s not about asking permission. It’s just we have to find the way, find our colleagues and financiers, and build it ourselves. Then we sell it. That’s what we’ve done with my last two films. Sing Sing we sold to A24 and It’s What’s Inside to Netflix.” Domingo explains that he and his husband developed It’s What’s Inside at Edith Productions, following that model to get it made.

“For me, it has to start with the individuals and the individual production companies. I believe that’s what me and my colleagues believe because we’re the ones willing to take the chances. Now let’s figure it out and let’s be smart. We can’t just be the creatives. We have to be connected to financiers and making sure we know how to get all things done, which is why I feel like we’re part of a generation of people are saying ‘No! I believe that we can be the studios.’”

Many of those assembled that night in New York have production companies and all of them, he says, “are all forward thinking artists who know that it’s just not enough to be the artist,“ he says banging the table to press home his point. “You’ve got to be the mover and the shaker, and you’ve got to be the numbers guy too.”

He doesn’t know what he’s going to find when he arrives back in an LA devastated by wildfires. He knows from Raul that his house in North Malibu is intact, but it “got the smoke.” He adds: ”I do know that the thing that I know I’m going back to is a community of people that really have been looking out for each other. What it’s brought out is the fact that we look after each other immediately.”

He and Raul still have their old home in Southeast LA. Selma director Ava DuVernay posted about needing somewhere for his old Selma cast mate, the actor Henry G. Sanders,his wife and his family who lost their home in Altadena. “I said, ’Let’s put them in my house,’ and Raul got it cleaned up and everything else.”

This is what “we do as a community” he reasons. “This is what we do at our best.”