Photos by Mel Ottenberg.
Last Thursday, a small crowd of crystal-adorned editors and influencers ascended on the jewel box palace that is Swarovski’s candy-scented 5th avenue flagship store. Inside, flutes of champagne drifted past a collection of Ariana Grande-designed jewelry, while partygoers took their seats for an epic chat between award-winning actor Colman Domingo and Interview editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg. The duo spoke on personal style, red carpet fashion, and how it takes a certain sparkle to make it in show business.
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MEL OTTENBERG: Hey, Colman.
COLMAN DOMINGO: How you doing, Mel?
OTTENBERG: Good to see you.
DOMINGO: Good to see you as well.
OTTENBERG: What are you wearing?
DOMINGO: I’m wearing some Swarovski jewels. I had to learn the power of editing because I wanted to wear everything. I guess it’s a bit like Coco Chanel would say, you have to take a few off.
OTTENBERG: Yeah, you took the necklace off.
DOMINGO: And today, I’m wearing some Valentino. This cool Valentino hat, Valentino shoes, and these shorts I’ve had for maybe 15 years. These shorts keep coming in and out of style.
OTTENBERG: They’re back. You look great. You have good style.
DOMINGO: Thank you.
OTTENBERG: Have you always had good style, Colman Domingo?
DOMINGO: You know what? I have to go to the origins of style in my family because I grew up in inner city, West Philadelphia, and I’m the third child of four, so I wore hand-me-downs. But eventually, I got a job at McDonald’s, and I was able to buy my own clothes and tried to figure out what my own style was. Now this is the mid-’80s, so I was wearing two-tone jeans and Perry Ellis and things like that, but I was never comfortable. I grew up very thin and I didn’t like that, so I covered up and wore lots of baggy clothes. Then I dressed towards it and figured out, “Oh, my legs are long. What proportions look good on me?” I started to look at my body as my own palette and I started to develop my own sense of style. A lot of times it’s classic tailoring, but it’s also playful, because I like my style to reflect my personality. I don’t want to look too stuffy, and I like to feel effortlessly luxurious.
OTTENBERG: Okay. So you’re in this specific era now, with all of your accolades, and by the way congratulations on each and every one. Do you now feel like you now have the confidence to get away with whatever you feel like wearing?
DOMINGO: You know what the funny thing is? I don’t know if I’m getting away with anything. There was an Academy gala two years ago, where I was wearing this beautiful, beautiful Valentino custom look, top to bottom. The campaign look had a little kitty cat bag and I said, “Oh, I love that bag. I want to take that bag with me.” My publicist wasn’t there, but they called everybody on my team and were like, “How could you let this happen? This man is up for Leading Actor, and he’s got a cat with him on the red carpet?!”
OTTENBERG: You got away with it.
DOMINGO: Exactly. See, I have a sense of humor where I would walk around with this cat, and if Demi Moore, who is now a good friend of mine, looked at it, I would say, “Demi, please stop staring at my pussy.” [Laughs] So for me, it was an icebreaker.
OTTENBERG: How do you get in the mood to feel glamorous, elegant, and playful? Is there some music that you specifically listen to get ready for say, the Met Gala? You were the Met Gala chair.
DOMINGO: Yes.
OTTENBERG: That was a big moment.
DOMINGO: Yeah, a huge moment.
OTTENBERG: People have tumbled down those steps.
DOMINGO: [Laughs] They have.
OTTENBERG: People that shall remain nameless now. It’s stressful. How do you relax for something like that?
DOMINGO: I take my time. I’ll start three hours earlier than everyone else because I need to take breaks to make sure I feel good. I’m probably listening to some Amy Winehouse or something. Usually the barber will come in first, and I would give him two hours, because we may want to be playful, add some hair. Then I would order some food for me and my team, and Jamie Richmond, my makeup artist, I’ll give her an hour and a half. We do patches and we relax and laugh, and enjoy ourselves. Then everyone else starts stacking in, the photographer, publicist, agents, all that stuff. We’ll have a toast and I take that spirit with me into the event, so I’m never just going alone. I’m taking all these people with me.
OTTENBERG: You weren’t someone who was an overnight red carpet star. You didn’t just start acting and get the nominations and the wins. You’ve had a really interesting, decades-long career in theater, in television, directing, producing, acting. And now you’ve arrived in this incredible era and you’re having so much fun. This is a ridiculous question, but how did you get there?
DOMINGO: My career mostly started in regional theater in San Francisco. I really just wanted to be a respected actor. I have little-to-no formal training, I learned everything by just doing it, asking questions, reading books, showing up for rehearsals that I wasn’t called for. I said yes a lot. One of my first jobs was in the circus. I did trapeze and juggling and stilt walking. I was like, “It’ll teach me something.” I’ve always carried that spirit into all the work that I do. Eventually I moved to New York and restarted my career. No agent, no anything, when I was about 36 years old. I got my first job at Manhattan Class Company and then I had a very small role with Liev Schreiber, doing Henry V in the park. Then my career just kept going with some deep lows and some great highs. I would finish a Broadway show, take a bow and then hop in a cab and go over to 55 bar that used to be across from Stonewall where I bartended for five years. I needed to pay my bills.
OTTENBERG: Wow.
DOMINGO: I had some career lows where I really thought it was time to give up. I did a show called the Scottsboro Boys, which took me to London. When I came back, I was starting from zero again, hustling and not making ends meet. By now, I’m in my mid-40s, and I’m getting tired of it. I have friends who are doctors and lawyers. They have 401ks, and I’m still living like a kid. So I thought, “It’s time to call it.” I was becoming bitter because I didn’t have opportunities. And this sounds like one of those Hollywood stories, but right before I called it—I had a very small boutique agent, and I wasn’t being seen for anything. I told my friend Daniel I was done and he said, “My managers have been wanting to meet with you for years.” And I’m like, “Nah, I’m good.” He said, “Just one meeting” So I went to the meeting, arms folded and I was like, “I just don’t think I’ll get access to the auditions where I can win.” They said, “Okay, we hear you but we would still love to take you on.” And in the first month, I booked Fear the Walking Dead, and I was on the show for eight years.
OTTENBERG: When did you feel like, “Oh shit, I made it.” Because it’s hard to try forever and not give up.
DOMINGO: It’s funny because I never thought that I had made it until recently. I’m like, “Okay, well, I guess it wasn’t a fluke.” I was nominated one year and I’m back again, so somebody likes what I’m selling. [Laughs] But I feel like I’ve always had an aversion to the phrase, “making it,” because I feel like I’ve got so much more to learn, to experience, to achieve that is very personal. But on the outside now, it does appear that I’ve made it. I mean, I can take myself for a good meal when I want to and not think twice about it.
OTTENBERG: Amen. I love it. Do you have any advice for all the people in the Swarovski store that are trying to make dreams happen?
DOMINGO: Well, now that I’m 55 years old I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy. I recognize that I’m standing in a space with all the things that I do that haven’t been done before. Some students at this school said to me, “Do you realize, Mr. Domingo, that as a black queer man in the world, you’re populating spaces and doing work that hasn’t been done before?” But I didn’t realize it. My agent at the time, she always wanted me to have a very conservative haircut, wear a chambray shirt with a sweater, like a young Black lawyer or something. I’m like, “That’s not me at all.” But apparently that’s the way people saw me. But I really wanted to write the work that I believed in and create the worlds that I saw. I had to be a director. I had to produce my own work. I come from a very humble background, Mom and dad didn’t give me anything, so there was nothing to go back to. I could only achieve. The thing that I’m most proud of, and I don’t say this often, is that I built this career. No one gave me anything. No one opened the door for me. But I said, “I’m going to get in somehow. I’m going to come through a chink in the wall, but I’m going to get there at some point.” No one’s going to tell you how to build it.
OTTENBERG: Well, they are, but they’re not going to tell you right.
DOMINGO: Yeah, they’re not going to tell you right. A lot of times I get a lot of people hit me up in my DMs saying, “Would you mentor me?” Like, I’m not going to mentor you.
OTTENBERG: I didn’t have a mentor at all.
DOMINGO: We don’t have fucking mentors. This sounds terrible. Mentor sounds like I’m supposed to do the work for you and make sure you don’t step into potholes. And then when things don’t go well, you look at me and I’m the problem.
OTTENBERG: Wow. That’s totally right.
DOMINGO: I don’t want that responsibility. What I want you to do is watch the way people work, the way they represent themselves, the way they build work. Everyone’s your mentor. But you have to make it for yourself.
OTTENBERG: In regards to what you were saying, I’m so lucky to even have a career. 20 years ago, I really wanted to be a fashion stylist and I got an agent, because I was doing these really cool magazine covers at the time. But the second I went there, they started being like, “Oh, well you can’t do that and this because you have to become commercial.” So I just did really bad styling because I didn’t know how to do that commercial thing.
DOMINGO: What helped you get back to yourself?
OTTENBERG: Well, the agent would just be like, “Oh, we can’t put that in the book because it’ll be scary to the client.” Like, who’s the client?! Lady, you’re not getting me any money. [Laughs] Then I got my first big job in pop music. And before I did it, I fired the agent. They were like, “You cannot leave. This is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.” I’m like, “You don’t understand who I am. You’re totally nice people, however. Peace.”
DOMINGO: It’s okay that everyone’s not for you.
OTTENBERG: Oh, yeah. That’s the number one thing. If you’re trying to be liked, that’s “pick me” energy.
DOMINGO: It’s the most liberating thing when you’re like, “I’m okay if you don’t want me on your set.” I would do a test of directors where I would walk into a room with a lot of questions about things, because I am a smart person. But if that director just wanted somebody to hit their marks, I wasn’t for them, because I actually interrogate my characters and hopefully try to make it better.
OTTENBERG: Same. Thanks for answering that. Is there a particular costume that you really think back on as being your fave and why?
DOMINGO: The costume I wore for the character, X, in the movie, Zola. I did this wild movie where I played a pimp.
OTTENBERG: Yes.
DOMINGO: Although he was a terrible person and he trafficked women, I wanted to tell a story from his point of view, as someone who had an immigrant story. He wears labels, he may have bought his clothing down on Canal Street, but you could see that he’s trying to achieve what everyone else supposedly has. I love doing that kind of detailing with costume designers. They’re are my heroes because I feel like they help me tell a story. I remember on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, I worked with the great Ann Roth—
OTTENBERG: The best. Ann Roth designed the costumes in Klute, which is my favorite New York movie. Style, baby. What are you most excited about next?
DOMINGO: I literally just wrapped my third season of Euphoria. Then I’m headed to do some pick-up shots for this Michael Jackson movie that I’ve been shooting for a while. And then I have a couple movies coming out this fall. One called The Running Man, with Glen Powell and Josh Brolin. And then I have another movie, a Gus Van Sant film called Dead Man’s Wire, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival. Then I’m also in soft prep for a film I’m going to direct with Sydney Sweeney and David Johnson. It’s an unrequited love story about Ken Novak and Sammy Davis Jr.
OTTENBERG: Cool.
DOMINGO: So I’m just a little lazy.
OTTENBERG: So lazy. [Laughs] Alright, Colman Domingo. Thanks for hanging out with me. This was great.
