"It all makes sense to me now," Colman Domingo says, speaking via Zoom from his home in Malibu, an oasis far removed from the city streets he once navigated. "Of course, everything will make sense to you in hindsight."
Well, it will if you’re Colman Domingo.
Currently featured in two of the season’s most anticipated series returns — HBO’s fever-dream youth drama Euphoria and Netflix’s midlife comedy The Four Seasons — Domingo exists in a different galaxy than he did just a decade ago. Back then, he was on the verge of walking away from the industry entirely. Burnt out from the relentless hustle and bitter rejections — like the time he was told he was too dark to play a maître d’ — Domingo had lived enough lives to make an ordinary person feel satisfied with all they’d done. He’d been a journalism student at Temple University in Philadelphia, a circus performer in San Francisco, a playwright, an acting teacher, a Tony-nominated and Obie-winning theater veteran and a self-professed fantastic bartender on both coasts while pursuing his Tinseltown dreams.
It was a reluctant "last-chance" audition for AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead that finally cracked the door open. Now, following eight seasons as Fear’s Victor Strand (2015–23), Domingo has entered a Golden Age: He’s a bona fide leading man with back-to-back Oscar nominations in 2024 and 2025 (Rustin and Sing Sing, respectively) and a 2022 drama series guest actor Emmy win for his portrayal of Ali, the Narcotics Anonymous sponsor for Zendaya’s Rue on Euphoria.
As he prepares for a new phase of prominence on television, Domingo realizes his winding past was actually a long-form rehearsal. If there’s a common thread in his life and work, it’s radical empathy. That’s the muscle he built growing up in working-class Philadelphia, the skill he sharpened in journalism school and the practice he perfected behind a bar. It’s also the alchemy that makes characters like the grounded Ali and the tightly wound architect Danny in The Four Seasons (which earned him an Emmy nom for supporting actor in a comedy series in 2025) feel like real human beings. Finally, it’s the guiding principle that defines his vision as a director.
"I’ve always had a journalistic heart," he says. "I’m always curious about other people. How do you get up in the morning? What inspires you? Bartending was the same thing: I got to see all these people and find out what they needed, or why they hurt. I know I’m a good actor, because I have the heart to tell stories. But I think I’m an even better director, because I know how to listen and inspire. I know how to empower my actors, raise questions and liberate them for the work. That’s exciting to me."
Watch the exclusive Under the Cover video with Colman Domingo at his emmy cover shoot.
As Ali, the no-nonsense voice of reason to Rue, Domingo’s ability to penetrate through hearts is in prime form. Practically every scene he’s in seems like justification for his Emmy win, but a few stand out. One is his performance in "Trouble Don’t Last Always," the bottle episode that aired in December of 2020 shot during the most harrowing days of the pandemic and meant to serve as a bridge between seasons. It’s a deceptively simple hour of television: Ali and Rue sit and talk in a diner, but it’s a tour de force performance. In a series known for its highly stylized look and startling plot turns, this episode strips away everything but the two characters. Domingo’s grounded, measured performance has him trawling through a whole ocean of emotions while sitting in a vinyl-covered booth. He typically logs about 40 hours a week preparing for an episode, but Domingo spent some 120 hours preparing for this one, including time spent listening to Zendaya’s lines on the Rehearsal Pro app in order to internalize the rhythm of the dialogue.
"Colman is so magnetic. You just want to be at dinner with this guy," says The Four Seasons co-creator and star Tina Fey.
"It’s taxing in a beautiful way," he says. "That’s tough work. I don’t overprepare. I want the act of nonperformance. I have a tremendous work ethic, because I don’t know how to do anything halfway. I’ve got to have fully invested choices and decisions and then be liberated in the space to find and redefine what those choices are, and Euphoria is just that set."
Domingo says Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, who crafted Ali specifically for him, writes some of the best dialogue and action any showrunner has ever given him. Even when the work is challenging, he wants to "rise to the occasion and deliver for" Levinson, whom Domingo likens to a brother. Levinson shares the sentiment.
"I love him," Levinson says. They met at Sundance more than a decade ago, when both were trying to get independent projects moving, and they clicked. They spend holidays together, and when Euphoria star Angus Cloud died in 2023, a shattered Levinson drove to Domingo’s house to talk; Domingo made dinner. "There aren’t many people I trust in this business the way I trust Colman," Levinson says. "He has such a beautiful range of talent. He’s grateful for everything he’s earned and his relationships."
Season three of Euphoria, premiering April 12, pushes Domingo’s range further. More of Ali’s backstory will be revealed, work Domingo says "challenges me in extraordinary ways — physically, emotionally and the way people perceive the character." Levinson sounds pleased with the results. "Colman just keeps getting better and better. He understands story from every angle — acting, writing, producing, directing. Colman has that rare gift of elevating all other artists around him. No one ever wants to let him down, so actors are more likely to be prepared, present and ready to go — wherever the scene might lead."
It’s because of Domingo’s ability to see the entirety of a production, not just his own parts, and his empathic nature, which lets him understand what people need in any given moment, that he’s been getting more work as a director. He directed the first episode of The Four Seasons’ second season, premiering May 28.
Series cocreator and star Tina Fey says Domingo, who had directed three episodes of Fear the Walking Dead, is a natural. "To direct, you have to be a real grownup," she says, "and this is where his many years of experience as a super smart actor who’s paying attention to everything around him comes in. He’s got this 360-degree awareness of who everybody on the crew is, what their job is and what they need in that moment, all while still taking care of the actors to get what we need out of the scene. It’s a lot to hold in your brain at once, and that’s where his experience and high EQ all combine to make him a great director."
Fey says she and cocreators Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield agreed that Domingo was their first choice to play Danny. She wanted to build an ensemble of people who felt like old friends and had a grace and ease with each other.
"Colman is just so magnetic," she says. "We were watching interviews of him on Graham Norton and going, ‘Oh my God, you just want to be at dinner with this guy.'" Of course, Domingo was better-known for dramatic work than for comedy, and though Fey and team knew he’d done some comedy on Logo’s Big Gay Sketch Show, his otherwise limited comedic CV, in a roundabout way, worked in his favor.
"He had been doing a lot of good but arduous work: Rustin, which was beautiful but emotionally painful, and The Madness, which was good but a lot of running around and getting shot at," Fey explains. "He obviously deeply understands that you play the emotional truth of the moment straight, and the humor will come out of that. We were like, 'Would you like to go to some pleasant locations and wear cute outfits?' We continue to marvel that he’s on our show."
To read the rest of the story, pick up a copy of emmy magazine here.
This article originally appeared in its entirety in emmy magazine, issue #4, 2026, under the title "Golden Touch."
