Colman Domingo awoke naturally at 3:30 within the morning on the day Oscar nominations had been introduced. He was jetlagged, having simply returned to L.A. from Europe. He regarded up on the moon and felt that, regardless of the darkness of the fires and the nation’s loopy politics and every little thing else occurring — it doesn’t matter what occurs — the moon was there, and he was blessed.
Two hours later, he came upon he’d been nominated for his soul-baring efficiency in “Sing Sing.”
We met just some hours later on the sky-scraping workplaces of A24 in West Hollywood, the place Domingo — 55, impeccably dressed, unsleeping and in good humor — was waxing thoughtfully concerning the energy of Shakespeare.
Colman Domingo, Sean San Jose and the solid of “Sing Sing.”
(A24)
“Shakespeare is someone who gives people confidence, I think, when it comes to language skills,” says Domingo, a Philadelphia native who has been performing for 34 years and who has performed his justifiable share of board-treading with the Bard’s work. “I think why I’m not afraid of language in my work is because I’m rooted with a lot of Shakespeare. … He’s giving you such great jumping-off points to create whole worlds with language.”
He ponders it a little bit extra, and provides: “I think Shakespeare would be a good buddy of mine. I think we’d have a couple beers together, and a good laugh.”
Once I point out that I’ve at all times struggled with Shakespeare as a result of it appears like a overseas language, Domingo launches into a completely dedicated and bodily recitation, from reminiscence, of a passage from “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” — about hopping fairies and blessing this palace with candy peace.
“You understood that, didn’t you?” he says when he finishes, a twinkle in his eye, and it’s all of a sudden clear simply how a lot of himself Domingo poured into his function in “Sing Sing.”
His character, John “Divine G” Whitfield, opens the movie with one other riveting speech from “Midsummer’s” — Lysander’s monologue about how “The course of true love never did run smooth” — which, the actor says, “tells you a lot about the character in the very first sentence.” Whitfield is a really actual individual, previously incarcerated and the product of the Rehabilitation By the Arts (RTA) program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. In conceiving his efficiency, Domingo noticed Divine G as “the best of that program and what it can be.”
“When I was examining his level of skill,” Domingo says, “I thought: ‘He’s just a very raw actor. Not polished.’ … But imagine if that raw talent was polished — it could be useful outside of the walls. You know, he can actually make a career for himself. Which is what my co-star, Clarence Maclin, is doing.”
Maclin, a.ok.a. “Divine Eye,” performs a model of himself within the movie, which he additionally co-wrote. He’s considered one of a number of former inmates and RTA alumni who play themselves alongside Domingo and a handful {of professional} actors, lending the entire manufacturing a robust authenticity. It additionally compelled Domingo — who had little or no time to organize to shoot the movie in 18 days, between doing “The Color Purple” and reshoots on “Rustin” — to be extra of his precise self than he’s ever been onscreen.
“I knew there needed to be sort of a sleight-of-hand,” he says. “But also, if I’m dealing with guys who had the real lived experience, and they’re bringing themselves and playing versions of themselves, to a certain extent I had to play a version of myself. I had to bring myself in every single way.”
Clarence Maclin and Colman Domingo.
(A24)
For that purpose, it’s onerous for him to look at the movie. He’s seen the film solely twice; as soon as in a tough reduce after which once more on an airplane. “When I would start to watch it, something would come up in me,” Domingo says. “I’m like: ‘I’m too emotional, and I can’t watch.’ And I had never felt that way about anything I’ve watched of my own — because usually I’m building a character. I think I felt too exposed,” in “Sing Sing.”
Within the movie, Divine G is the de facto chief of a bunch of males who stage performs on the maximum-security jail. He’s a proficient thespian who additionally writes performs; a delicate man, a mentor and a self-described jailhouse lawyer who’s getting ready for his parole listening to. He recruits the a lot rougher-edged Divine Eye to affix the RTA program, and regardless of their very totally different temperaments and Divine Eye’s preliminary resistance to the vulnerability and unguarded feelings this system elicits, they turn out to be unlikely associates.
In a single scene, Divine Eye calls Divine G the N-word, and Divine G says they don’t use that phrase contained in the group — as an alternative, they name one another “beloved.” This was, the truth is, a lesson the actual Divine Eye taught Domingo throughout considered one of their Zoom rehearsals, and Domingo insisted they work it into the script.
“He said it just so carefree,” Domingo says. “And I was like: ‘Grown, tough, strong men in prison call each other “beloved.” ’ ” It was stated so casually, Domingo notes, and but was so impactful. “I thought that was key.”
“Sing Sing” illustrates the profound energy of performing and the humanities to heal the cracked and hardened hearts and our bodies of males locked behind bars. It does so with out preaching or grandstanding, with essentially the most light contact and feathery 35mm cinematography by Pat Scola, who selected to make use of pure mild and to deal with the “landscape” of those males’s faces as they alternate between parading in foolish costumes and quietly visualizing their happiest reminiscences.
Clarence Maclin and Colman Domingo.
(A24)
“I think it has a grace to it,” says Domingo, “a grace and an intelligence and a tenderness. And nothing about it is being an activist or political in any way. If anything, it’s the antithesis of that. It’s very human — so therefore it does become political, because you’re dealing with the people. So it takes care of that by just going more micro.”
A lot of the movie was shot in two actual prisons — together with Downstate Correctional Facility in upstate New York, which had simply been decommissioned two weeks earlier than the solid arrived.
“So every ounce of it was very real,” Domingo says. “The way the air did not flow. The cells. The colors. The layout of the land, where you can’t find your due north because it’s just set up that way. And you thought about what that does to you psychologically. And then you thought: ‘Well, this doesn’t feel like a place where anyone can heal or get better or contribute.’”
For Domingo, placing on jail greens (which he wished to be a little bit ill-fitting) was simply one other costume, however for his castmates it was a real act of braveness to get again into garments, and an setting, from which they hoped that they had been completely freed — “but I know that they knew the impact it could have, a film like this,” he says.
Nonetheless, even he wanted a much bigger emotional security internet to do that challenge, which is why he requested that Sharon Washington play the parole board officer and Sean San Jose his fellow inmate, Mike Mike. “Those are my two closest friends on the planet,” says Domingo, who has identified San Jose because the mid-’90s, once they had been younger actors collectively in San Francisco, bringing performs concerning the AIDS disaster to Bay Space college students. He wanted them, he says, as a result of they “really held that space for me to be as vulnerable as possible,” he says. “They know my heart.”
Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin.
(Dominic Leon/A24)
There’s a pivotal scene, halfway via the movie, the place Divine G involves his parole listening to with a stack of envelopes and proof, assured {that a} newly discovered recording will exonerate him from the homicide that wrongly despatched him to Sing Sing.
“He’s hopeful, and he’s open, and he’s also vulnerable,” Domingo says. “He’s all the things that the program has built him to be. There are trust exercises in the theater, so I think he’s being trusting that this person will meet him where he’s meeting them, with the truth. But he almost forgot, I think, that he’s up against the cynicism of the world.”
It takes only one query from Washington’s character — asking if his sincerity within the interview is definitely a efficiency — “to just derail him, to take something that he’s been using as his soul work, and to question it,” he says. “It just dismantles him right there.”
Domingo didn’t plan the way to act that scene, however operating smack into the cruel actuality of the system, the actor visibly deflates. “I tried to say something, but I had no words,” he explains. “Someone who always has something to say is rendered speechless.”
This heartbreaking second, compounded by one other tragedy, causes Divine G to lose hope, and he turns into very quiet and nearly catatonic when he’s again in rehearsals for the upcoming play — “I think because there’s a volcano deep inside, and also an abyss,” Domingo says. “I think he’s someone who has hung on and clung to faith and hope in art. And his hands can’t cling anymore. So he just goes to zero.”
In that state, the slightest disturbance — somebody in this system taking his props, somebody forgetting their line — units him off, and Divine G erupts.
“It gets me emotional to think about it,” says Domingo, “but it’s like, this man’s life has been ruined — and many other folks’ too who’ve been wrongly incarcerated. And you feel like you’re just a plaything for life. And at some point, he’s like: ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ Even this gentle man will fall apart and get angry.”
After a surprising outburst and withdrawal, he’s lastly in a position to come again to the sunshine due to the teachings of tenderness and compassion he’s been imparting to Divine Eye. Within the movie’s closing scene, when Divine G has lastly been launched, Domingo walked up the highway leaving the jail, once more, he says, not premeditating how he would react when he noticed Maclin ready to greet him. That scene had been rewritten many occasions, “overwritten” in Domingo’s opinion, and he requested: “Can we just try one without those words?”
The director, Greg Kwedar, stated: “I’m going to trust what you and Clarence do.”
Domingo’s thoughts and coronary heart had been filling up with the character’s actuality: Having been locked up for 25 years, he’s popping out to a world the place his mom is gone and he doesn’t know who, if anybody, might be there for him. That’s when Maclin opened his huge, manly arms for a hug.
“No, no, no, no — not with the weight of 25 years and what he’s thinking,” Domingo thought. “No, please don’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. All that he’s been holding, all that he’s been holding. Clarence hugs me — and the sound that came out of me is a sound that I know I’ve only heard one other time out of my own body. And only people who understand this know that sound. It’s a guttural sound, and it’s a sound when you lose someone very dear to you … like when I lost my mother. It’s a sound that I never want to hear again come out of my own body.”
“Sing Sing” director Greg Kwedar and Colman Domingo.
(Phyllis Kwedar/A24)
However for Domingo, “Sing Sing” was value the price of how a lot he gave of himself. It’s a movie that delights within the uncommon fantastic thing about seeing grownup males cry collectively, of trusting their hearts to one another and of recovering the childlike pleasure of play.
He tells me an anecdote a few younger lady who stated she began bawling when Sean Dino Johnson — one of many actual former inmates — rolls round on the ground taking part in with a sword. He requested her why, and she or he stated: “Because it’s something I wish for my father, for my brother, to allow themselves to play and be vulnerable, and how beautiful that is, and how that helps everybody.”
Domingo says this movie is essentially the most vital factor he has ever made. “It’s something that can really shift people’s hearts and minds,” he says. “It really can.”
