“It feels like my work has been building in this wonderful crescendo,” says Colman Domingo. The actor, who got his start in New York theater with an interlude in genre television (Fear the Walking Dead), has long been a staple of lauded awards contenders like Selma, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Last year, Domingo landed his first Oscar nomination for playing civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in Rustin.
Currently, Domingo can be seen in Sing Sing playing John “Divine G” Whitfield, a participant in New York State’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program which is run out of the film’s eponymous prison and sees the incarcerated producing and acting in stage productions. The story centers on the real-life friendship of RTA alumni Whitfield and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who plays himself along with a cast that includes other RTA alumni playing versions of themselves.
Domingo was unfamiliar with the RTA prior to being approached by filmmakers Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar about making a film centered on and starring the men who had made their way through the program. Says Domingo, “I was hooked not only by the idea of it, but their passion for it. I felt like they want to be in service to the stories that I think are very important, yet very marginalized.”
As Sing Sing continues to roll out to more screens, it is opening the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival on Aug. 2. Ahead of that screening, The Hollywood Reporter talked to Domingo about the experience of filming in a decommissioned prison and taking a pay cut to give others equity in the film.
You had less than a month to film Sing Sing in between other projects. How was it to tackle this project on such a truncated production schedule?
My history is in the theater for 30 years. I’ve worked in many different circumstances, and sometimes you may not have the luxury of a deep rehearsal period. But you can use what you can in the moment, and let it bring something different in your performance— a bit more raw, a bit more edgy, and a bit more honest. I thought this was a perfect opportunity with these men and with this film, in the way we’re building it to be as organic as possible. We have people playing versions of themselves and their friendships that have been cemented for over 30 years. Everything about it felt like a hybrid of anything that I’ve known before.
Have you had any experiences like this on a film prior to Sing Sing?
That was a new experience on a feature film. Feature films are more delineated when it comes to roles. I was even watching the cuts of the film. It meant even making decisions on whether we say, “Based on a true story.” Every single detail, we all make together. That’s quite beautiful and rare, because usually you do your part as an actor, and then you show up to the premiere and see what the directors have done.
For Sing Sing, you and the other filmmakers used a financing model that saw everyone be paid the same wage and given equity in the film. As the star of the film, as is typical for independent films, you could have demanded the biggest salary but you didn’t.
It just made sense to me. They presented a couple of ideas once that had me attached. They could go out to studios, a standard way to go, but then they also presented this community-based model that I was intrigued. The fact we are using people’s stories that they’re giving up, they can be a part of themselves, they should have ownership. It felt very new and unique, the idea of having everyone above and below the line share equity. It felt like a perfect opportunity in this landscape knowing that this is exactly what folks were striking about: How do we feel valued? I also want to caution: Do I think it can be used on every production? I’m not exactly sure. Things that have been on a larger scale and required more from certain members of our production, I’m not sure.
How was it to film in a decommissioned prison?
A decommissioned prison lent to the rawness of performance because you didn’t have to create in your mind so much. You didn’t have to do that work. The air quality did the work for you. The size of the cells did that work for you. The fact that you can’t tell which way is north when you’re walking through the halls did that for you. There are certain things you just have to lean in as a performer and something really raw and honest is going to happen because you’re actually in that environment.
Stories set in prisons have been seen in film and television but what can audiences see in Sing Sing that they haven’t seen in other stories about incarceration?
I think we take a sledgehammer to any trope. We’ve had Shawshank Redemption, The Wire, and all these [onscreen] experiences where we think it’s nothing but violence, nothing but darkness. We want to show that there are people in there, taking accountability and responsibility and wanting to do the work of healing to better themselves. I think that’s kind of radical. I think that we’re showing radical love between Black and Brown men which is not typical. That was something very important to me. This is a part of our healing and our liberation for ourselves and our mental health— to feel soft, to feel vulnerable, and to smash tropes of toxic masculinity that we’re raised with. And that was not something I was putting on it but that was something I received by talking to these guys when I saw how affectionate with each other and looking after each other.
It sounds like Sing Sing has been a singular experience in your career. What will you take with you from the process of making this movie forward into your future work?
Whether it’s working on Rustin or playing other civil rights leaders, I am more mindful of how my voice has been used as an artist on all these platforms. I am starting to understand how I’m most useful by telling complex, interesting stories of marginalized people. And I never want to do the same thing twice. I keep finding more and more stories, whether in the comedy space or the dramatic space or the history space, of these complicated men with these relationships that I care so deeply about. That’s what I take with me — I’ve learned that that is that is a bit of my superpower. When you’re a young actor, you just want to like, get a gig and make some money. But that never happens. (Laughs.) My work has become very purposeful and mindful, and I realized that that’s a great thing for me.