Colman Domingo says banning books, plays and drag queens is ‘the exact opposite of what America is about’

Colman Domingo, a self-titled “theater nerd,” nonetheless can’t consider he’s associates with Audra McDonald.

“It’s past 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 presents on the Tony Awards on CBS (later to stream on Paramount+), an evening he’s anticipating to be a full circle second.

“I really feel like I’m amongst my superheroes,” he tells Yahoo Leisure of the Broadway neighborhood.

The showbiz veteran, 53, is having one hell of a 12 months, 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 Shade Purple (Christmas Day) the place he stars as Mister, initially performed by Danny Glover within the 1985 movie.

However it’s 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 at all times been an actor who aspired to simply do good work and have it amplified, however this can be a complete different degree to look at your affect, and to see the place you might be within the zeitgeist,” says Domingo, who’s additionally nominated for a Tony this 12 months as co-producer of the Broadway play Fats 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.

“Once I was coming into the theater, as a teen within the ’90s and touring excessive faculties, there was no arts training. It was missing,” he recollects. “That’s after I began to grasp, Oh, whenever you take away the humanities, you are taking away constructive pondering, you are taking away spirit and soul. Now we have to infuse faculties with extra artwork, extra drama, extra music, extra expression, as a result of that’s the way in which we make change. And I believe the ‘established order’ is aware of that. They attempt to abolish that promise, however the factor is… you possibly can’t.”

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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 have been an exquisite model accomplice, for me,” he says of the corporate, which he is had a relationship with for practically three years. “They’re actually within the enterprise of serving to me amplify the issues which can be vital to me,” equivalent to combating censorship and empowering marginalized communities.

“Traditionally, it’s at all times one thing artists are up in opposition to,” Domingo, a proud homosexual man, notes of censorship. “We’re at all times combating a established order that holds us again from being who we’re, after which instantly feeling like we’re a menace. Like, how is it attainable that drag is a menace? It’s probably the most absurd factor on this planet, this concept of individuals feeling like they wish to take away folks’s private decisions and expression. That’s the precise reverse of what America is about, which is to attempt to dwell as much as the beliefs of being free. But, it nonetheless looks as if it’s only for a number of.”

Domingo discovered that lesson in actual time, after starring within the play Passing Unusual, 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.

“These had been gentle bulb moments in my life,” he says of these roles. “Individuals had been like, ‘Oh, Black folks like Rock ‘n Roll? Black persons are not monolithic?’ That taught me find out how to be an activist in my work, to say, ‘Really, artwork is activism.’”

It is also helped him develop distinctive strategies to organize for roles, particularly for characters which can be usually seen as darkish or menacing, like Mister in The Shade Purple, a fancy and troubled man who’s initially depicted as an abusive husband to Celie (performed by Fantasia within the newest iteration). However because the story progresses, he undergoes growth and transformation.

“He’s a harm one who hurts folks,” he says of Mister. “Even together with his abusive nature, you perceive that he’s a harm particular person, a damaged particular person. He isn’t simply villainous. He did not get up one morning and determine to knock Celie over the pinnacle. It is from years of his personal conditioning.

“It’s an examination of humanity,” he says of this efficiency. “I acknowledged that there is darkness in each one in every of us. All of us have decisions: I select to dwell with grace, I select to dwell with forgiveness. I’ve all the identical instruments that may flip to the opposite aspect and be darkish, if I did not have entry and if I wasn’t beloved, if I did not really feel that I used to be heard. And so, I attempt to push my characters in that manner.”

Much more, provides Domingo, to completely be himself as an out queer man — and nonetheless be one in every of Hollywood’s most wanted abilities, usually enjoying straight male characters who’ve intimate relationships with girls — is a testomony to how far society has come.

“I by no means considered it as a limitation in any manner,” he says of his identification. “I’ve at all times had a way of belief and perception in who I used to be on this planet. It is at all times been vital for me to not impose one thing that the skin world has placed on me, whether or not it is what they see, as a Black man. They won’t essentially know I’m queer, and but nonetheless, I believe I prefer to shock folks with it, to say, ‘Hey, that is who I’m.’”

That satisfaction, he says, continues to drive him. It additionally conjures up the message he conveys to younger folks. “The struggle,” as he calls it, isn’t just on them. “It’s on all of us.”

“It is time for us to get again on the market,” he says of turning artwork into activism. “You possibly can’t legislate pleasure and love and expression. You are not going to silence me. You are not going to cowl my mouth up.”