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.
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