Best Of: Colman Domingo / Writer Leïla Slimani

Fresh Air

This episode of Fresh Air Weekend features two compelling interviews: actor Coleman Domingo, nominated for two Emmy Awards for his roles in Netflix's

Key takeaways

• Coleman Domingo's Emmy-nominated roles highlight his versatility across genres—from comedic ensemble work to intense dramatic performances in 'Euphoria.'
• Domingo reflects on how his theater background informs his acting, emphasizing authenticity and emotional depth even in comedy.

Main topics

• Actor Coleman Domingo's career evolution from theater to Hollywood
• Emmy-nominated performances in 'The Four Seasons' and 'Euphoria'

Notable quotes

Danny is so acerbic. My gosh, he's like an altered universe me.

Conclusion

This episode offers a rich exploration of identity, performance, and personal

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) For the first time, U.S. government debt has surpassed $40 trillion, a massive number that affects your bottom line. This week on Consider This, we connect the dots between the national debt and your car payment, your mortgage, your small business loan, and so much more. Listen to Consider This, the daily Speaker 1 (0:20) afternoon news podcast from NPR. Speaker 1 (0:24) From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Coleman Domingo. He's nominated for two Emmy Awards this year for two very different roles. In the Netflix comedy, The Four Seasons, and in the final season of HBO's Euphoria. Also, we hear from French-Moroccan writer, Leila Slimani. She writes from her dual perspective as biracial. with members of her family representing the countries of the colonized and the colonizer. Plus, rock critic Ken Tucker looks back at the soundtrack of the 1976 film Sparkle, sung by Aretha Franklin. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Speaker 7 (1:22) This message comes from WISE, the smart way to manage your money around the world. With WISE, you can send, spend, and receive money in over 40 currencies at the mid-market rate. Learn more at WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's hard to refine your taste when everything in your algorithm is vying for your attention. Is that influencer you follow giving you the right advice? What should we actually be paying attention to in our social media feeds? This week on It's Been a Minute, culture critic and host of the new podcast, Feedback, Ira Madison III, takes our hand and shows us the way. Watch the full It's Been a Minute episode on YouTube or listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. At NPR, there's a little something for everyone. If you need advice for that big life change, try listening to Life Kit. If you want to know more about that new TV show, check out Pop Culture Happy Hour. And if you want to dive deeper into your favorite podcasts and enjoy perks like bonus episodes, archive access, and more, check out NPR+. Find out more and support the shows you love at plus.npr.org. Speaker 1 (2:26) This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, Coleman Domingo, is nominated for two Emmy Awards this year for two very different performances. In the Netflix comedy The Four Seasons, he plays Danny, one half of a long-married couple who vacation each year with their oldest friends. Danny is funny, vain, impeccably dressed, and now in his 50s, confronting a question he thought he'd settled long ago, whether he wants to become a father. And in the final season of HBO's Euphoria, Domingo returns as Ali. a man in long-term recovery who has spent the series trying to help Rue, played by Zendaya, stay alive. Domingo won an Emmy for that role in 2022, and this year he's nominated again for his performance in the series finale. It's the latest chapter and a remarkable stretch for Domingo, whose rise in Hollywood came after decades in the theater. He started in regional productions in San Francisco, then moved to New York, where he performed on Broadway. won an Obie, was nominated for a Tony and an Olivier, and wrote and directed his own plays. In his 40s, Hollywood caught up with him, and since then he's had a steady run of roles, an Emmy, and back-to-back Oscar nominations for the film Rustin and Sing Sing. Just this year, he played Joe Jackson in the biopic Michael, and had a role in Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day, and hosted Saturday Night Live, and just last month, Jimmy Kimmel. Speaker 2 (4:00) Welcome to Jimmy Kimmel Live. I'm your guest host, Coleman Domingo. I'm so happy to be here with all of you. We're going to have some fun this week. Just think of me as Jimmy if he had better clothes than Zendaya's phone number. Speaker 1 (4:19) Coleman Domingo, welcome back to Fresh Air. Speaker 2 (4:21) Thank you so much, Tanya. I appreciate it. That Speaker 1 (4:23) was such a delight to see you on Jimmy Kimmel. Every summer he has guest hosts who come in and you were in the rotation. And you were in Speaker 2 (4:31) the Speaker 1 (4:31) rotation for just about a whole week. Speaker 2 (4:33) Yeah, for a whole week. And it was great. It was like the week of a lifetime. It was so much fun. And, you know, I love that things are coming to me right now, like opportunities to do things I've never done before. Like, I've never hosted a late night show, but I love the idea of looking at myself the way someone else sees me. And if Jimmy thought that I could do it, I thought, well, let me try. But the first thing I do is I go into deep research. I went back and looked at old Jack Parr shows. Speaker 1 (5:01) Oh, you did? You went in? Oh, Speaker 2 (5:02) yeah. Johnny Carson. I looked at the greats, and I wanted to figure out how did they do it, and what was their style, and what would my style be? Speaker 1 (5:09) Yeah. Well, congratulations on your Emmy nominations and on being able to host Jimmy Kimmel Live. Speaker 2 (5:15) Thank you. The Speaker 1 (5:16) Four Seasons is such a fun watch. And it's about three couples, old friends who vacation together for decades, and what happens to the group when those marriages start to shift, which happens with everyone's relationship. This season, your character, Danny, he's dealing with several issues within his own marriage. And he and his husband, Claude, have been... talking about having a child, and Claude is, he's basically having second thoughts. And so I actually want to play a scene. In this scene, Danny has just come from one of those conversations with his partner, and he's confiding in his best friend Kate, played by Tina Fey, while they look at a beach home that is for sale. Let's listen. Speaker 2 (5:59) Okay, 6550 Chalene. Speaker 2 (6:04) I mean, the wallpaper is Midwest funeral home, but the house! If we were smart, we would buy it and turn it into a bed and breakfast. Speaker 6 (6:14) Oh, I'm in. I will retire early and run it, and then when our husbands die... Speaker 2 (6:18) Claude, botch, facelift, jack, perforate, erectum from too many unnecessary colonoscopies. Yeah, we'll live here together. Can we do it now? Claude's pissing me off. Speaker 6 (6:30) Oh, is it because of his bonnet? Speaker 2 (6:33) The surrogate asks if we're still interested, but now all of a sudden, Claude thinks that we're too old. Speaker 6 (6:37) Oof. I mean, I get it. Speaker 2 (6:40) No, he was supposed to say you're not too old, and how dare he? Speaker 6 (6:42) I'm sorry, you are very young. You told me who SZA was. Speaker 2 (6:47) Do I know for sure, for sure, if we should do it? No. But I do know we can't keep talking about it. We're either never going to do it, or we're going to become two Tony Randalls who feed our baby applesauce that we also eat. Speaker 6 (7:02) Okay, if you're really having trouble making a decision, my therapist... No. ...has a book... Speaker 2 (7:07) Absolutely not. ...called Speaker 6 (7:08) The Three Magic Questions. Speaker 2 (7:10) I'll kill you in your sleep. Speaker 6 (7:11) It really helped me decide whether I should do Invisalign for a third time. I decided possibly at a later date. Speaker 2 (7:16) There's nothing to decide. At this point, we just need to push through. Speaker 6 (7:20) Yes, you could push through, or you could seriously consider Claude's concerns. Is this right for both of you, or... Speaker 2 (7:27) Hi, Brenda. We are definitely still interested. What Speaker 6 (7:31) are you doing? Speaker 2 (7:32) I'm pushing through. Speaker 1 (7:38) That was my guest, Coleman Domingo, in the Netflix series, The Four Seasons. Throughout that entire clip, you kept laughing at all the different points. Speaker 2 (7:46) Oh, my God. Danny is so acerbic. My gosh, he's like an altered universe me. Speaker 1 (7:52) In Speaker 2 (7:53) what way? I don't know. He's just really pointed and funny. He's really a creation that I really, really love. I love the way the writers write. For him. Did you Speaker 1 (8:05) have a hand in it, though? Speaker 2 (8:06) The funny thing is, no. I would say the thing that I have a hand in, I will, when I first met with Tina Fey to talk about this character. Because Speaker 1 (8:15) she's the creator. Yeah, she's the creator. Speaker 2 (8:16) She and Lang Fisher and Tracy Wakefield. They wanted to bring together a group of people that they understood, you know, based on the 1981 Alan Alda film. But to really make it modern. and fun and warm and make sure that this couple in particular, it's one of the central couples as well, this couple should feel like a couple that I understand. And I knew the thing that I told Tina was, here's a same-sex loving couple that are really in very heteronormative environments. These couples are having issues like everyone else, but they're also very spirited and very much who they are. Speaker 1 (8:57) This is an ensemble of comedy veterans. Tina Fey and Will Forte, they came up through SNL, as we know. Steve Carell through Second City. Kerry Kinney Silver through Reno 911. And that is largely improvised. And you have done some comedy, but you have come from some serious places. You come from the theater, you know? Very much so. Did that make for any interesting dynamics on the set? Speaker 2 (9:23) Well, the thing is, when I first got... got the invitation to be a part of it, I thought, for a second, I thought, well, why me in particular? Like, I'm not really known for comedy. But I think that what Tina and the rest of the gang could tell is that I'm willing and I'm game. But I hadn't relied on those comedic chops in a long time. So to lean into that was something, it felt new and fresh again for me, especially this late in my career, where the idea of doing a half-hour comedy was a challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it more than anything. Speaker 1 (9:55) I can just imagine, though, being with all of those funny men and women. Did it feel good when they laughed at the stuff you said? You know? Speaker 2 (10:02) You know, it does. But the funny thing is about funny people. And I tell you this. And I wonder if they would say this about themselves. They don't naturally laugh when something's funny because they're like mad scientists. They almost look at the math of it. Oh, they're Speaker 1 (10:15) dissecting it. Speaker 2 (10:16) That's good. I wonder how that happened. You did this. You turned on this line. You blah, blah, blah. You gave a pause. You get a beat. Most comedians I know are very serious people. And also, they're also a bit shy. I think my, I would say this, Tina's very shy. I would say Steve Carell's very shy. But they know how to get the thing done. Like mathematicians, they look at it in that framework, which I think is fascinating. Speaker 1 (10:44) You actually directed an episode. Yeah, this season and last season. Lang Fisher, one of the three co-creators of the show, said that when you directed the episode Ultimate Frisbee, she watched you cry in a scene you were in while directing another actor through his own tears, going back into that character you were in to keep... to keep crying, all while still watching whether the background performer meets its steps. And that seems like an extraordinary amount of work to hold all at once. Speaker 2 (11:17) It is. And I don't know if everyone's brain is meant for that, but I feel like I have one of those brains. I can manage a lot, which is why I've always been a director since I started in the theater. Because I can handle a lot of... Frisbees up in the air at the same time. Where Speaker 1 (11:33) does that come from? I know you're hyper-organized. Speaker 2 (11:35) Yeah, I'm hyper-organized, but also maybe that's it. I'm well-prepared and planned so I can be loose and free, but my mind has always been on everything. I think it starts with the way I came into this industry, which was learning by going to rehearsals I wasn't even in. I would go