“I lost my mind”: the breaking point that almost forced Colman Domingo out of acting
Colman Domingo had an awkward callback that made him seriously rethink his career.
Although he has spent the better half of his career being a character actor who only appeared in supporting roles, Domingo has more than established himself as one of the best of his generation. If his back-to-back ‘Best Actor’ nominations at the Academy Awards for his work in Rustin and Sing Sing, respectively, weren’t proof enough, look no further than his Emmy-winning role on HBO’s Euphoria to see how he can dramatically improve the quality of an otherwise mediocre show.
His current popularity has made it fun to look back at the earlier roles in which he popped, many of which weren’t appreciated in their time. Although having such an eclectic career has made Domingo a fascinating actor, it is indicative of a period in his career when he was more frustrated looking for parts. He admitted that trying to balance his day job while attending auditions nearly collapsed his enthusiasm for the art of acting.
“I was auditioning literally eight times a week,” he revealed to The New Yorker, “I was exhausted, and I was bartending. Things weren’t working well. The auditions I got, I just felt like they were not leaning toward my talent, and there was this audition for a recurring role on Boardwalk Empire. This role seemed tailor-made for me. They said, ‘It’s a song-and-dance man, he’s the emcee of this cabaret’. I danced, I wore a tuxedo, I sang.”
Boardwalk Empire was among the most popular shows on television at the time, as the HBO prestige gangster drama starred Steve Buscemi and was executive produced by Martin Scorsese. While Domingo had impressed the casting agent, he was told that the series was looking for a fair-skinned actor in order to be historically accurate.
“I lost my mind,” Domingo said, “I screamed, ‘They knew what I looked like before I got there! I feel like everyone’s fucking with me’, and this is in a gym. I literally burst into tears. Everyone’s looking at me. I go to the corner. I’m sobbing. I said, ‘I can’t take it. This is going to kill me’.”
The experience had been frustrating enough that Domingo and his husband decided to leave New York, but it wasn’t long before his talents started to earn the attention of major filmmakers. Steven Spielberg cast Domingo as Private Harold Green in Lincoln, where he shared a scene with Daniel Day-Lewis in the performance that won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’. Spielberg wasn’t the only genius filmmaker who took notice of his versatility, as he would soon be collaborating with Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Barry Jenkins, and Ava DuVernay.
Ironically, the same network that denied Domingo a potential breakout role ended up giving him the most important critical breakthrough of his career, as his talents were most evident thanks to his role on Euphoria as Ali Muhammed, a former addict who has become a sponsor for the teenager Rue, played by Zendaya. The grace, humility, and integrity Domingo brought to the role were incredibly powerful, and the series was smart to focus entirely on his character in one of its acclaimed specials.
Domingo has now reached the point where he no longer has to attend awkward auditions, as he has landed roles in films like Wicked: For Good, The Running Man, Dead Man’s Wire, and the highly anticipated new Spielberg blockbuster Disclosure Day, and no amount of racist sidelining is going to stop him.
