Colman Domingo Is (Finally) About to Become a Household Name

Demi Moore rubs elbows with Philadelphia’s own Colman Domingo at the 2025 Oscars ceremony. Domingo hosts Saturday Night Live this week. (Getty Images)

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If you’re remotely up on what’s happening in the world of entertainment, you no doubt know the names Adrien Brody, Timothée Chalamet, and Ralph Fiennes. How about Bradley Cooper, Paul Giamatti and Cillian Murphy? One of the things these men have in common, other than fame and wealth and leading generally charmed lives, is that they were nominated for Best Actor in the 2024 or 2025 Oscars. You know who else was? Philadelphia’s own Colman Domingo. Both years. And yet, when I’ve spoken with some generally well-rounded Philadelphians whom I normally respect, I’m amazed when they scratch their heads and ask, “Who is that again?”

That response, I expect, is all about to change.

Though he now makes his home in L.A., Domingo is a Philadelphian through and through. He spent his formative years at 52nd and Chancellor streets and attended Overbrook High School, where he had gym class with none other than Will Smith. “He was popular,” Domingo recalls. “Me? Not so much. I was the nerdy kid on the school newspaper.” From Overbrook High, it was off to Temple, where Domingo pursued a career in journalism. While at Temple, he wound up taking a theater class as an elective, at the suggestion of his mother.

“My family saw me as being a really shy kid, but my mother knew I had a bit of a personality,” he explains. “It was just hard to make it come out. So she encouraged me to take an acting class as an elective, to help me come out of my shell. And I immediately knew that the theater was where my heart lied and that I could tell people’s stories, but in a different way.” He dropped out of Temple to pursue his dream of being on stage and screen.

Colman Domingo in Law & Order (photo courtesy NBC)

Domingo struggled at first to find success. Like Claire Danes, Idris Elba, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a slew of other actors, he did the before-they-were-famous Law & Order thing, appearing in three versions of the franchise. He eventually landed a small part in the groundbreaking 2013 film The Butler. (Variety called Domingo, then a virtual unknown, “excellent” in it.)

Domingo’s career picked up in 2015 when he landed a major role in the cult-followed AMC horror series Fear the Walking Dead. In 2019, he took on the recurring role of Zendaya’s sobriety coach in the HBO hit Euphoria.

Then came the Oscars. In 2024, the nod was for Domingo’s starring performance in the critically acclaimed, Obama-produced biopic Rustin, about West Chester–born civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, and then, in 2025, prison drama Sing Sing. (An NPR critic raved about his “special kinetic energy” in that.) And who voiced the Cowardly Lion in last year’s Wicked follow-up, showed up as a drag queen dancing with Sabrina Carpenter in her “Tears” video, and, around the same time, appeared on the cover of both GQ and Esquire? Yep. Colman Domingo.

Colman Domingo is seen after receiving the 2025 Lumière Award during the 34th Philadelphia Film Festival on October 26, 2025 in Philadelphia (Getty Images)

He’s not slowing down. Far from it. This Saturday, Domingo makes his hosting debut at Saturday Night Live. I asked him how he’s been preparing for that, since live sketch comedy on national television is a bit different than scripted movies and TV shows where you get multiple takes. “I’ve recently watched a lot of SNL,” he told me with a laugh. “Especially the opening monologues, because they can kind of really make or break the episode. The opening monologues that I appreciate the most are from real tried and true comedians like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.”

The next day, Euphoria returns to HBO after a long hiatus. And then there’s Michael. On April 24th, the Michael Jackson biopic will begin screening all over the globe, with Domingo playing the Jackson family’s controversial father, Joe, without whom the Jackson 5 (and, by extension, the entire career of the most famous pop star of all time) wouldn’t have existed. He’s returning to Philly in May to give the commencement speech at Temple, his (almost) alma mater. And in June, at the kickoff of summer blockbuster season, Domingo co-stars as a conspiracy theorist in the new Steven Spielberg sci-fi epic, Disclosure Day, a movie that has been shrouded in no shortage of secrecy.

“This is a movie about hope and about the question of whether we are alone in the universe,” he says of the film. “And if we invite that question in, what would it do to us? Would it dismantle our civilization, or would it rebuild it in some way? I think it’s really about that. It’s really about a great argument of who are we in this big thing called the universe, and what’s possible.”

So, yeah, we think that maybe a few more Philadelphians will know the name Colman Domingo by the end of the summer.

As for what Domingo will say to the thousands of Temple students he’ll be addressing on May 7th, he tells me he isn’t sure. “I’ve been working on some ideas,” he says. “But with things like this, I tend not to really know what I’m going to say until the day I have to say it.” I’m guessing it will be something like what he told me in a previous interview, back in 2021, when I asked him what advice he gives to anyone who tells him they want to be an actor: “Bet on yourself.”

That mantra certainly has worked out very well for him.