Colman Domingo, a self-titled “theater nerd,” nonetheless can’t imagine he’s pals with Audra McDonald.
“It’s beyond nerdy,” the award-winning actor and producer jokes of his sudden friendship with the Broadway legend. Domingo will likely be hobnobbing with different theater greats on Sunday, June 11, when he hosts the Tony Awards on CBS (later to stream on Paramount+), an evening he’s anticipating to be a full circle second.
“I feel like I’m amongst my superheroes,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment of the Broadway neighborhood.
The showbiz veteran, 53, is having one hell of a yr, as a string of ardour tasks are scheduled to drop within the coming months — together with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (June 9), Drive-Away Dolls (Sept. 9) and the extremely anticipated movie model of the Broadway musical The Color Purple (Christmas Day) the place he stars as Mister, initially performed by Danny Glover within the 1985 movie.
But it is by no means been in regards to the glitz and glamour for Domingo, who spends extra time counting his blessings than reveling in fame.
“I’ve always been an actor who aspired to just do good work and have it amplified, but this is a whole other level to watch your influence, and to see where you are in the zeitgeist,” says Domingo, who’s additionally nominated for a Tony this yr as co-producer of the Broadway play Fat Ham, a contemporary tackle Shakespeare’s Hamlet that facilities on a Black queer lead.
When reflecting upon the indelible mark he’s made within the business, Domingo can not help however level to the truth that, in some areas, arts training is changing into a battle floor within the tradition wars.
“When I was coming into the theater, as a young person in the ’90s and touring high schools, there was no arts education. It was lacking,” he remembers. “That’s when I started to understand, Oh, when you take away the arts, you take away constructive thinking, you take away spirit and soul. We have to infuse schools with more art, more drama, more music, more expression, because that’s the way we make change. And I think the ‘status quo’ knows that. They try to abolish that promise, but the thing is… you can’t.”
The roles he chooses to play, equivalent to Ralph Abernathy within the Martin Luther King biopic Selma, or as famend LGBTQ civil rights activist Bayard Rustin within the upcoming Netflix biopic Rustin, mirror his personal activism.
That additionally goes for the businesses he chooses to accomplice with — together with his partnership with Zacapa Rum, the official sponsor of the 2023 Tony Awards.
“They’ve been a wonderful brand partner, for me,” he says of the corporate, which he is had a relationship with for almost three years. “They’re really in the business of helping me amplify the things that are important to me,” equivalent to combating censorship and empowering marginalized communities.
“Historically, it’s always something artists are up against,” Domingo, a proud homosexual man, notes of censorship. “We’re always fighting a status quo that holds us back from being who we are, and then suddenly feeling like we’re a threat. Like, how is it possible that drag is a threat? It’s the most absurd thing in the world, this idea of people feeling like they want to take away people’s personal choices and expression. That’s the exact opposite of what America is about, which is to try and live up to the ideals of being free. Yet, it still seems like it’s just for a few.”
Domingo realized that lesson in actual time, after starring within the play Passing Strange, his Broadway debut in 2008, and later within the Susan Stroman musical The Scottsboro Boys, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award in 2011.
“Those were light bulb moments in my life,” he says of these roles. “People were like, ‘Oh, Black people like Rock ‘n Roll? Black people are not monolithic?’ That taught me how to be an activist in my work, to say, ‘Actually, art is activism.’”
It’s additionally helped him develop distinctive strategies to organize for roles, particularly for characters which might be usually seen as darkish or menacing, like Mister in The Color Purple, a fancy and troubled man who is initially depicted as an abusive husband to Celie (performed by Fantasia within the newest iteration). But because the story progresses, he undergoes improvement and transformation.
“He is a hurt person who hurts people,” he says of Mister. “Even with his abusive nature, you understand that he’s a hurt person, a broken person. He’s not just villainous. He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to knock Celie over the head. It’s from years of his own conditioning.
“It’s an examination of humanity,” he says of this efficiency. “I recognized that there’s darkness in each and every one of us. We all have choices: I choose to live with grace, I choose to live with forgiveness. I have all the same tools that can flip to the other side and be dark, if I didn’t have access and if I wasn’t loved, if I didn’t feel that I was heard. And so, I try to push my characters in that way.”
Even extra, provides Domingo, to completely be himself as an out queer man — and nonetheless be one of Hollywood’s most wanted abilities, usually taking part in straight male characters who’ve intimate relationships with girls — is a testomony to how far society has come.
“I never thought of it as a limitation in any way,” he says of his id. “I’ve always had a sense of trust and belief in who I was in the world. It’s always been important for me to not impose something that the outside world has put on me, whether it’s what they see, as a Black man. They might not necessarily know I’m queer, and yet still, I think I like to surprise people with it, to say, ‘Hey, this is who I am.’”
That pleasure, he says, continues to drive him. It additionally conjures up the message he conveys to younger individuals. “The fight,” as he calls it, is not simply on them. “It’s on all of us.”
“It’s time for us to get back out there,” he says of turning artwork into activism. “You can’t legislate joy and love and expression. You’re not going to silence me. You’re not going to cover my mouth up.”
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