Colman Domingo

He's doing a double pass. It's like, Wow, people went crazy, especially since they were finally able to be so so there's lots of trash. Hello, I'm mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always loved Prus questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions, there wasn't

really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Pruce questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself. What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal?

And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with. My guest today on many questions is actor, producer and director Coleman Domingo. Coleman is what I would call a connector. He connects people and ideas and moves through the world

with a kind of creative joy. I sometimes imagine him like a fairy tale princess lost in the forest, where the path lights up with every step that they take, and they're followed by a gentle chorus of butterflies and birds. He is pretty incandescent. We talked about life and love, and particularly about change and how it's both a gift and a blight. I left our conversation with a smile on my face that has actually yet to recede. What person, place,

or experience has most altered your life? Oh wow, I would say Francisco. I moved to San Francisco when I was twenty years old, and I thought I was moving to San Francisco to become an artist. That I became a man there. I thought I was going to become an actor. I became an artist there. It was transformative to me because I moved there. I just did redefine myself. To very honest, had a buddy who moved to San Francisco after college and he was like, Hey, I got

this place in the Tendue District. It's nothing, but you know street walkers and der Alexey Navy in the neighborhood. We live in a studio, and you want to come and live in a studio with us. I'm like, absolutely, because that's what you do when you're twenty years old. You live with four other dudes in a studio apartment. And I literally slept in a closet. But it was a place where I feel like I grew the most, and I sort of redefined myself in every single way.

I grew my hair out, I started to hippie drum circles and do you know Watsu and be on the beach naked. I became another version of myself. I became this weirdo artist boy. And then I got even more focused in terms of like what I believe, my intentions, where my purpose was, which was being an artist. So San Francis sco hold so much of my heart because although I grew up in Philadelphia, I feel like I was raised in San Francisco and I was there for ten years. Yeah, but in San Francisco from one to

two thousand one? Wow did you become an actor? That? Yeah? I became an actor there. I had this inkling. I took a few classes at the Walmut Street Theater School and at Temple University, and then I moved to San Francisco just you know, with questions and wanted to try things. And then I started get cast, and then I had to actually learn about what I was actually doing. So my productions were my conservatory, my books, my mindster, my Stanislavski,

you name it. By Udha had in respect for acting, I learned blocking by doing it, by wondering what is blocking? What are they writing on stage? So anyway, I became a theater artist in San Francisco, and I learned to respect the theater and respect craftsmanship, and you know, I was securely in the theater for you know, I would say twenty six years of my career was fully majority of arly on the stage and writing for the stage

and to think, yeah, wow, Garli. I always wanted to work in the theater and I could just never get cast. I remember I lived around the corner from the Royal Court, which is this amazing theater in London. This incredible artistic director at the time of this guy called Max Stafford Clark. I literally used to go and I talked my way in through the theater and they'd be rehearsing in the studio or whatever, and I'd find my way to his office and I'd be like hello, and he'd be like yes,

and I'd be like, I'm a local actor. I need to work. I've auditioned a hundred times. Can you give me a job? And he would look at my resume and he would go, yeah, well, you've got no theater on here, and I was like, no, I know, so we can we can get some theater on there. I used to badger him and it was so funny. I just never I don't know, what it was. I kept getting cast in television, and when you're young, you know, obviously you've got to pay the bills. You gotta do

whatever comes your way. But I never got any of the theater work. I don't really have many regrets, but that is definitely one of mine, is that I've read them a million times, but I never got to play those women that I read. It's not too late, I think you never know when I don't know, maybe you've been just dating and holding this in for so long, but maybe that theatrical experience will now blossom out of you at this time. Why not you never know? I had a dream how to dream the other night. I'm

not kidding. It has never been my dream to play Juliet. By the way, She's one of the least interesting women that I have wanted to play. I actually auditioned for drama school in the role of Volumnia Caria Leans his mother. So I was seventeen, playing you know, a woman in her late thirties early forties, and they were so amused. I think that's why they kind of gave me a

call back. They were like, this weird child, like playing a middle aged woman with a grown up Warriors son like what I was like, I saw Judy, don't do it. It was amazing. And they were like, if you took it upon yourself to think that would be a good idea. They had this dream the other night that I was playing Juliet. It was so funny and in one of the scenes with Romeo, it was actually the scene with respectfully taking poison and I sat up and went, I want to be you, I don't want to be me.

Can we switch? And he said, well, yeah, but we're both still going to die. It was quite a cool dream. That is fantastic. Oh my god, Where and when were you happiest? Immediately? The first thing I think about is with my mother. I think probably sitting in the kitchen of our row home in Philadelphia around and probably doing my homework at the kitchen table while my mother is cooking. And when she would cook, like in the summer or

something like that, she was cooking her bra. She was cooking her bra and her slip, and so I just thought, I don't know, that's where my mother cooks. She gets very comfortable and she usually I can see her frying chicken and she's sweating a little bit. But she's also teaching me. She loved that I was curious about how she did things in the kitchen and something about that just with a mother's love and the kids and my mother always just she was just a real cool, fun

sweet woman. She's no longer with us, and I'm not someone to angelicize someone, but my mother was really awesome. She was funny and fun and interesting and always curious and inspiring me to be curious as well. So, you know, late seventies ear ladies, sitting in the kitchen with my mom. Do you think those are the corner stones of happiness for you, which is comfort and homeliness and feeling safe. Yeah,

I think many. That's why I tend to have people over to any apartment or house that I've ever had. I'm always the hub. People know that I will have a dinner party just because come over for dinner. I love to feed people. Have a beautiful garden pool, and I want people over enjoying it at all times, because I think that's what maybe I was taught, that you share these things, you always have a sense of love

and comfort in safety people. I love that It's so funny because you'd invited us over on July four, and I wish I could have got there, because your your home does look absolutely spectacular. It looks like it's set up for you to never leave it, you know what. Listen, we're the second owners after the first owners built the house, and it was built by a Jewish doctor and his wife in nine and he built it to be the

house that he's in forever. And he was until he was ill and his wife was ill, and then the house went to the children, and then they finally sold it to us. And I feel, honestly like the caretaker of the house. I feel less like, oh, I bought a house and we made it our own. But I felt like I wanted to love this house because you could tell it was loved. You couldn't feel it. When anyone comes over to the house, they're like, oh, no

one ever wants to leave. By the way my party it started out, I was like, we have an afternoon hang. It started at two o'clock and I didn't endle two thirty in the morning. Oh my god, I wish we'd come. It's that house, I'm telling you, And it happens consistently. I'm just say, no one ever wants to leave my house. I want people to feel loved, and so I'm like, take a nap, there, go jump in the pool, there, go use this what, there's lotions, whatever you whatever you need,

the house is open for you. You know, it's a very particular thing being a host, and there is a huge amount of generosity. And I must say that's what I think of when I think of you as an actor. Thank you, generosity. Being part of a cast or collection of actors. It's such a particular mindset, you know, it's wild. I think I've always approached what we do many as

a service job, that we truly are in service. And I think those routes started in the theater, where it's like I knew the task, I knew what the assignment was, which was to be in service to the audience, to be in service to the story, being service to what we're creating, To not come in with any preconceived notions, but do as much as I can and then see what I bring to the table, and then welcome what

someone else brings in. To be honest, if I know one good thing about myself, I may not be the best at many things, but I know I'm a good host. And I know that. That's why I become a director, because I know how to throw a good party. I think there's skills of yours that you need. You're like, oh no, I know my parties are good because I know about the music. Who did invite? Why to invite them?

The kind of vibe. I'm curating the whole thing, you know, and I'm leading the vision and then just welcoming what everyone brings to it, like bring something, bring a cake, bring nothing, bringing babens to but bring something that is going to help generate this huge, I don't know, epic experiment of communication and love. That's why I invited you, guys. I felt like I knew what you would bring and whatever that is, you know, I would have bought ribs

and a good attitude. Oh yes, thank you for bringing ribs. I appreciate that. Pork ribs or beef ribs. Many porker beef pork cribs, poor cribs, same here, thank you. I'm committed to pork. I understand the deep ribs. Too big, too much, too big, and too much, too big, too gaming exactly. Yes, thank you, See many, I knew you were invited to the cookout. I'm coming to another cookout. I want to stay at a party till two thirty in the morning. That's amazing. It just kept going. I

love it. I love it when the right people won't leave. It's the worst thing when the wrong people start. But then you really have only yourself to blame for having invited them in the first place. So you just talked about being able to appreciate that about yourself, which I love so much because it means that you can actually consciously add that and the things you know you like about yourself, you can consciously bring them to the things that you do in the way you move through the world.

So tell me what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you. I think to be honest, I just have to say my husband m Role is one of a kind. I admire him. We've been together for seventeen years and I really admire him. It's not only just about our love, but it's also about our brotherhood, about our friendship, about our patients with each other, about a stepping outside of the unit and saying what do you need? Where are you? And he's gone often saved whales and you know, turtles.

He went off and they went to a turtle arm Coustoy for a month and we didn't speak to each other for a month because he was committed to this thing. I went to London for a while for six months to do a couple of plays, and his schedule would't allow him to be there, but I was like, go on your journey, trust that I'm here for you. It doesn't fracture our relationship as anything. It allows us to grow in another way that allows to be independent in

some way. When we first met seventeen years ago, I've been through a couple other relationships and I was sort of exhausted with presenting the person that you want me to be in a relationship and actually denying actually who I was, and vice versa. I was like, no, so actually it became an interrogation when our first day, it was like, what are you really about? Who are you? What do you really like? What do you want? Grill

want to know who you really were? Don't be afraid tell me exactly the things that you think are ugly about yourself, that are beautiful and that you hope you could be better. Because if we're really dealing with each other in that way, that's real love. I think I think I'm experiencing real love with him because it does mean we can truly be and exist and accept each other for who we are and also inspire each other

to be a little different. You know, do you think that it's different like that what you just said, This is what real love is. This is what it is. I think I'm living it. Do you think it's very different to the idea that you had growing up of what love was? Because I know my love is. I can't believe it. I love this person that I am with so much, but in this way that I never thought love would be this, but it is. I always thought it was something else, and actually my previous thoughts

were erroneous. It wasn't that. It is this. I agree many I agree because I think allowed times were taught that with love you have to give up something. I don't think it's about giving up. It's about like being open to shift or grow. But I think it's like

I've always believed that love's available. That's something that I know that some of my friends have not thought or believed, or they come into believing all my relationship will be these things, and they have these parameters that it must be this must look like this, and like you're creating something in your own mind that doesn't exist. Because when you see that thing and you have that spark, you have to accept what is. And I think love is imperfect.

You've been, you grow, you cry, you hurt, you all that stuff. But I think if there's the underpinnings of saying I'm committed to wanting to do this and explore this with you and explore grace, explore kindness, openness. Someone told me this many years ago and never forgot it. I asked this older couple what was the key to their success and they said, and I think this woe this woman. She says, you've got to be alone for the ride to know that they're going to change and

it's going to have nothing to do with you. And that's okay. I think that's we have to love people, right, I mean, yeah, you have to love them with loose hands. That's it. You can't be tight. I think for fear, people always think that someone's gonna leave you. But I'm like, if someone's gonna leave, they're gonna leave you. It doesn't you can't hold tight to it. You just have to invest and pour all the love and care that you can to it and trust it it will be for

the time that it's supposed to be. You know, we hope things can be happily ever after. You know, we been told fairy tale. Happily ever after? Is that the truth, that's the whole? I believe that's the wish. But you know, maybe happily ever after a few years or a cup of coffee if you laughs, I don't know, or fifty years. It's really true. And we're never really asked to investigate the fairy tale, whenever asked to kind of cross examine it. I know I grew up with this idea that that

is what you do. You grow up, you fall in love, that person loves you back, and then you have a baby. And that is not how my life turned out at all. I grew up, did not fall in love, had a baby, did fall in love, broke up with them, fell in love with someone else, but all the time sort of mining for the parameters of what that love is. And it's so far away from the initial idea. And you're right.

You have to keep growing, you have to keep doing the personal excavation and allow your partner to do that as well. I think, yeah, because you don't even know what your family is supposed to look like exactly. I think we're set up. We're thinking what you said. You set up thinking, oh, you fall in love, you have

a child, it becomes this other thing. But no one even knows that maybe you fall in love, you have a child, you don't have that love, you have another relationship, that you become best friends with, the person you made that child with, or whatever. But maybe your family is supposed to look like this whole other creation based on the actual reality that people that are involved in it, instead of some ideological thing the fairytale looming over all

of us. You know. That's I'm so interested in how we how do we disseminate what other good ideas to hang onto, and what are the ones that we should really go Nah, that's not going to serve me, because you can only do it by living it, really, and then circumstance will slap you in the face and go, that was a really terrible idea to have hung on too for so many years, and now here we are, Well, that's any good drama, right, isn't it? The human condition?

I think it was Marty Knots and a great show runner. She said, A great story is a great protagonist that is and committed to a wrong idea of themselves. I love that in minutes about the film or the series or something that's trying to challenge them to change. That is really good. Well. I always attached to an idea about ourselves that we have to smash and have to let go of at some point, because you have to realize how long is it serving you? Is this really

serving you? Are you happy? Are you getting what you want?

You're probably lucky if you get to smash it or even have the impetus to do that, because a lot of times I think people will use the quick fixes to stop feeling bad about that thing and all of the available stuff that we have in our world of consumption, various things from addictive to non addictive, but repetitive behaviors becomes such a sort of immediate way of dealing with it, rather than going question question the fundamental idea about why you want to keep doing this thing and if it

serves you. I have a question for you. I think by like, say, let's say, by smashing these things many if you like, I don't know, how have you been as a person when it comes to change, terrible terrible, really terrible terrible. With change, I say to myself, if you change, change everything, I think it's a a fearlessness with that. And somehow it served me because I think I checked. All I have is my gut to trust that. So what why has it been difficult for you? You

know what? Because because I actually feel exactly how you do, which is if I have a gut feeling about something, I have to act on that, and that has often meant engendering change. But the change itself I loathe. It feels unstable and terrible and like like I have seasickness and it's awful, But I have this terrible volition to do it. And I think that's one of the things, like if I could wave a magic wand and change something about myself, it would be to more readily embrace change,

to to love it. Nothing in life is stasis. Nothing, Everything is cant a me moving and involved and said, get on board women, that could come on, man, get on, That's exactly it. Come on. It's so true. I remember when I moved from New York years ago and people were so like I had a rent stabilized department. I had a wonderful career in New York, and people felt like, why why do you want to leave New York? You got a rent stable and I was like, you know what, you got a job in an apartment, got a job

an apartment, you're working on Broad what you're doing? Shut up? But I felt like New York, like I trusted that New York was just not my vibe right then and there, I thought like, I'm not growing. I feel the winds of change coming and I've got to go with it. And so at some point I just I'll think about it for a moment. But then at some point I just cut it all off and I give up the apartment. And people are like, no one gives up a rent

stabilize department. You hang onto it and until they pull it out a claud under your dead hand, you know. But I was like, I gotta go. I said, I gotta trust that there's more I gotta trust, and you know, and then I gotta rent in Los Angeles that I never would ever imagine paying for because I was kind of like, you know, I was working artist, and never I just thought in a couple of working class family. I felt like Oh, we don't spend that kind of

money in an apartment. But I decided to do that because I thought, let me trust the universe that the universe will provide this is what I need. And then it kept providing that. So I think maybe that too, because I've done the math of it now after living in his body for fifty one years, I've done the math, and I see that when you trust your gut, when you go with that feeling, it works out. I feel like I feel like I'm starting my own church right

here on your podcast. I love it. I feel that you have a philosophy that is underwritten by New York real estate. I mean, it's a it's a pretty interesting I kind of feeling. I'm trying to figure out the name stabilize your life. Stabilize your life with from real estate, from real estate to real good vibes. There we go. That's good, perfect, I'll take it. H What question would you most like answered? Wow, that's a great question, because I think that's a question of the heart. Is there

a heaven? Mm hmm? And will I truly see my loved ones again? Because you know, I've lost some really terrific people in my life. One recently, one of my dear friends are and I lost my parents. And you know what, I love? I love so deeply because I feel like I've been attracted to I don't know these dreamers, these people who believe in magic. One was my mom, lother was my dad, one of my best friends already. And you wonder if you're like, are you there? Are

you in another realm Am? I just hoping and wishing and believing. But I want to know is that is that true? Do we really go to the other place? Are you watching over? Are you listening? Are you speaking

to me? Are you walking with me? I wonder if knowing, would you know how when we find magical things out as people, and then there's that moment of starting to put it into practice, and it's incredible and amazing, and then pretty soon this magical thing becomes part of your daily life and it no longer becomes special and magical.

It just becomes part of the cutidian. And I wonder if we just can't hold that much information and keep it as magical as it's supposed to be down here on Earth, in all of this thick vibration of being in a physical body on a planet and that that whole etheric idea like that we couldn't hold it without corrupting it in a way. Wow, I think that's very valid.

As humans, we do corrupt the magic, right, we kind of do, And maybe reaching for it is better and feeling like you know, when I go and try and find my mom, I really have to feel for her.

I have to let go of all of the ship that I've been thinking about in the day, and I have to connect with nature or she always used to tell me to admire the infinite sky, and I wonder if that that is as pure as it could ever be, and that if someone could tell me if there was a heaven, I probably only ruin it by it then just being another thing in my purse, just another place that you know. Kind of yeah, and you're right, because

maybe I know what you're saying. Maybe I want to know because I'm reaching out towards it and it's a burning question in my heart. But it also keeps us in that realm of magic and that dimension of space and time and transcendence are the things that we don't know. Maybe you're right, it's maybe maybe we're not supposed to know everything. Maybe that's it, and it's in the not knowing that you can actually stay connected to spirit and that if we drag it down here it wouldn't be that.

I don't know. I've been giving it a lot of thought because my mama died quite recently, and I'm I think about all the time, actually, But I'm glad that you think about it too. I'm glad that it's one of those things that we wrestle with. I think, yeah, because I think I don't know. I'd like to believe, as we know of people who have experienced a tremendous loss,

especially mothers. I know when I lost my mother. My mother was my best friend, and when she passed, a sound came out of my body that I don't think I'll ever hear again or want to hear. It was animalistic. It felt like something that was being severed in some way, shape or form. And then I think I've constantly been like like, I know and feel her presence and all that happens in the world, all the people that are sort of gentle reminders of her. I do understand that

it is a thing. I guess you're not supposed to know until you do now, because I think you're supposed to have some faith that there is more. I think that's what keeps you more event forward because you know what the end is. We all know what the end is. It's very clear what the end is. It's definitive that we all will die, but there's a promise that we will live on and we will see each other again. And so I think we keep moving through space with the hope that I'm going to see that person in

until I get that. I'm going to keep doing things down on this plane and hopefully making a difference, leaving some fingerprints some things, and making hopefully the spaces that we're in rich and full before it's our turn. But we want to know that when it's our turn to someone's there that you're not alone. And that's something we don't know. We just have to have faith and believe, yeah, exactly, And maybe that faith is what can make being here a little freer because it's like, we just get this

one as far as we know. So play. Can I ask you a question, mannye? Can I ask you a question? When your mother passed, you're very close and a right, hyeah, what do you think the love goes? What do you do with that love. Good Lord. Well, the funny thing is,

I don't feel like it's gone anywhere. Like I feel like, in a way it has become distilled because the fact that she's not here to kind of talk about all the stuff, to all the bad stuff, all the difficult stuff, all the amazing stuff life in general, because all of that has disappeared. Really, what's been left in this kind of relief is the grace and the laughter and the humor,

and all of that for me is love. And I feel it's so intensely and even though I'm I can't talk to her and tell her, I feel like that was the gift that she left me with was what survives of us is love. Like that is quite literally what survives of us is that vibration and that feeling. And to be able to give that to your children and for them to continue to feel after you're physically not here anymore, I think that's the point. It's like

passing the baton. And I was explaining that to my son the other day, and I think it was really amazing being able to tell him, and I know he won't forget I have all of this love, all of this love that mom left me with. And it's so incredible to be able to tell you about that love and that when you see it, you'll know it, you'll see because you'll recognize it in you, and then you'll have it, and so it goes on, and so it goes on. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry you lost

your mom and your dad. I mean, we all do it. It's just it's just what happens. We do, we do, and and you know it's for those who haven't, if anyone's listening out there who haven't, and I think it terrifies them knowing that if it happened, they don't know what they would do. And I'm always going to be well, you will. I a grieved and I leaned into it. My friend Melissa was the one who gave me the advice. I said, because I felt like I was such a good son. I loved being a son, I loved my parents.

And she said, you're going to pour that love into everything that you do. And so I think that I know that, I I know it was a definitive moment in my life where the choice was to use that love with even more conviction, and like you're saying, to distill it to say that this is what, what purposes, what my intentions are, who I love, how I love not that not that I flitted it around, but I

guess I did. I just had it was more out there. Yeah, it focuses you, like that's the thing when you lose someone, even though you don't lose them, but when they are physically gone, it is so focused because you so clearly feel what it is that you felt about them. Yeah, it certainly made me question all of the stuff that I gave a lot of energy to that really didn't deserve their energy and didn't need it, didn't require it.

Done with that right, you can see Coleman in Zola, which is in theaters now and it's honestly the most radical and best film of the year in my opinion, maybe in many years. Run don't walk to see it, and Candyman, which is released on August the twenty seventh this year. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver,

Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Minni Driver, special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson Addison O'Day, Lisa Castella and Annick Oppenheim at w kPr DE La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver