Colman Domingo is one of the greatest actors of his generation

2024 is proving to be the year of Colman Domingo. The actor, who just turned 55, started with the kind of awards ceremony that others dream of: In January, his work was in The color purple (as the brutal “Mister”) and Rustin (as civil rights icon Bayard Rustin) earned him two mentions at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. And shortly thereafter, this latter film earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. This moment would have felt like a culmination of decades of hard work (and it was). But like much of his career, Domingo didn’t slow down.

The Tony-nominated and Emmy-winning actor followed suit with his roles in the soulful prison drama Sing, sing, about the real-life program “Rehabilitation Through the Arts” and Ethan Coen’s crazy, pulpy, lesbian road trip film Distribute dolls. And now, with the release of Netflix’s limited series The madness, The Philadelphia-born actor illustrates how prepared he was for such a turning point in his career. On the other hand, Domingo has been putting in a lot of work and creating these groundbreaking roles for three decades now. Hollywood just keeps catching up.

There’s something quite invigorating about seeing Domingo at the center of a TV series that knows how to capitalize on the actor’s versatility. In The madnessHe plays Muncie Daniels, a promising media executive on the verge of getting his own CNN show who is framed for the murder of a notorious white supremacist who may or may not have had billionaire friends in high places. Written in the style of North By Northwest, The Refugee, And Double danger, This is a series where Domingo’s Muncie is constantly on the run. He can’t seem to move forward without witnessing his story being rewritten right before his eyes, hidden evidence conveniently turning up where he lives, and possible clues mysteriously disappearing. Domingo, it turns out, is a great everyman, largely because his version of it is so rarely ordinary and relies on the actor’s deft ability to find the sublime in the everyday, the sublimity in the ordinary. His Muncie is similar and different to all the other guys in the area. It’s exciting to watch Domingo, who shows off all of his acting chops here, express Muncie’s anguish at having become the main character in a story he would rather not be a part of.

The madness builds its central premise on the basis of an intriguing (and all too timely) thesis: A black man in America, no matter how famous or educated or wealthy or well-connected, can easily be accused of murder simply by expressing racist fears about his seemingly inherent nature fuels violence. Muncie Daniels is as respectable as it gets. But a chance meeting with a white neighbor in the Poconos, whom he soon finds dismembered, leads to a foot chase and several news broadcasts in which he discovers he is now the prime suspect. Muncie is a great scapegoat precisely because he’s the kind of left-leaning villain that the media can only pick up on and the police and the public can only believe.

Photo: AMANDA MATLOVICH/Netflix

As Muncie finds ways and allies to help him prove his innocence – which turns out to be a bigger conspiracy than he could have ever imagined – Domingo plays notes on the many characters he embodies in his long-running hit (if (also recently full of hot streaks) career. In fact, Domingo was, at one point, the definition of a working actor, the kind of expression that feels like a putdown but should instead be understood as a career marked by consistency.

If you were watching Nash Bridges in the late 90s and everyone else law and order In the early 2000s series, there’s a good chance you saw Domingo on screen in some of his earliest roles. These were small roles that suited a work-hungry actor. Most of the time these were bland roles with just a few lines of dialogue that helped advance the plot of a particular episode. Domingo was featured in Nash Bridges on four different occasions – and never in the same role. One moment he plays a police officer burning to pieces; Next we would see him getting arrested for trying to get drugs. Likewise further law and order (and its various spin-offs), he played, among other things, an aggressive defense attorney, a sassy gay bartender, and an elusive drug dealer.

With a lithe physicality that can equally easily suggest a towering authority figure or a disturbingly slithering presence, it’s no surprise that he found ways to land roles on the small screen while honing both his directing and acting skills on stage on both coasts. He may have only landed small roles in television procedurals, but his theater resume is enviable, with enough Shakespeare and August Wilson productions on the West Coast to help him land such storied works on Broadway Temporarily strange And The Scottsboro Boys– not to mention the special performances of The magician (as part of the Encores! concert series), Boys and dolls (at Carnegie Hall) and A raisin in the sun (in a benefit reading for one night only).

When he actually started breaking in Fear the walking dead and later in euphoria, Two series that benefited from the smooth manner of speaking that Domingo could bring to the screen, and while they were cloaked in a warm sense of menace, it was pretty clear that the actor was in a league of his own. And that’s not just because he had successfully built a career as a gay black man that allowed him to easily oscillate between popular genres, prestige television and film roles Lincoln, Selma, If Beale Street Could Talk, Zola, And Ma Rainey’s black ass– all projects that, especially when viewed in tandem, paint a portrait of a career blossoming after years of nurturing and nurturing. If Domingo’s last decade feels like an arrival, it’s only because many of us are starved for the kind of star that Domingo is: a deeply sensitive performer who gets under the skin of his characters and presents them to us with such boldness That their structured humanity emerges can’t help but shine through.

The madness“Muncie Daniels seems to be a combination of everything that made Domingo such a compelling screen presence. He can be calming and level-headed (which is why Muncie is such a great expert), but equally vicious when needed. (How else can he be expected to survive when so many people want him dead?) He can be a hot-tempered flirt when the scene calls for it (such as when he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife are in one Investigate swingers club undercover). Nevertheless, he is a short-tempered force (for example, when a police officer provokes him during an obscene interrogation). When necessary, he can show loving warmth (e.g. when he rekindles his relationship with his eldest daughter), but also strict and adamant when called upon to do so (e.g. when he tells his son about has to clarify his marijuana use). And he does it all – or at least most of it – while wearing the most stylish midnight blue peacoat you’ve ever seen. Muncie may not be as fashionable as Domingo has shown himself on red carpets big and small, but he’s still often impeccably dressed. He is a man who sells a certain vision of himself to the outside world, but also watches that vision slowly crumble around him, faster than he can resolve it on his own.

This limited series tackles many thorny topics – conspiracy theories, the media pundit ecosystem, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, dark money interest groups and high-level corruption – but its greatest impact may be to further cement Domingo as one of those subjects greatest talents of his generation. The rumbling intensity that always seems to be bubbling beneath his characters, ready to be unleashed with either cowardly cruelty (as in…). The color purplesay) or honeyed empathy (as in Singing Singing), is used here as a weapon to tell a story about what it means to lose yourself in someone else’s story – or someone else’s game (and perhaps even an entire country’s drama). And by allowing Domingo to immerse himself in all the different selves Muncie knows and the ones he must become in order to survive, The madness makes for a worthy showcase for the actor.

And once again it feels like a new beginning. You just have to look forward. In addition to returning for euphoria‘s third season, He will next be seen in Antoine Fuqua’s highly anticipated biopic. Michael, as Joe Jackson. He will also appear in Joe and Anthony Russo’s science fiction adventure The Electric State and the Disney+ animated series Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man (as Norman Osborn, no less). Oh, and he’s also working on his upcoming feature film debut: a biopic about Nat King Cole, in which he will also star. As always with the increasingly prolific actor, this moment may seem like a peak, but Domingo has built something of a mountain range.