Colman Domingo shares husband’s sweet reaction to his historic Oscar nomination
Rustin star Colman Domingo and his husband, film producer Raúl Domingo. (Getty/Jesse Grant)
Rustin star Colman Domingo has revealed the emotional way he and his husband, film producer Raúl, responded to the star’s historic Oscar nomination.
When the nominations were announced yesterday (23 January), Domingo was named among the five men now vying for best actor gong.
The nomination, for his role as gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the Netflix biopic, is Domingo’s first Oscar nod, and makes him only the second out gay actor to be nominated in the category for playing a gay character.
The first was Ian McKellen in 1999, for his depiction of English film director James Wale in God and Monsters. He lost out to Life is Beautiful‘s Roberto Benigni.
Colman also becomes the first Afro-Latino star to be nominated in the category and is up against Bradley Cooper in Maestro, The Holdovers’ Paul Giamatti, American Fiction’s Jeffrey Wright and many people’s favourite to pick up the Oscar, Cillian Murphy, for his role in Oppenheimer.
Speaking to Variety, Domingo said he couldn’t sleep because his body knew it was nomination day, so he decided to get up and organise his closet.
Then, when the names were finally revealed, his husband, to whom he has been married since 2014, had an adorable response.
“My husband was watching the feed. When they said my name, he literally laid on the floor. We had a little cry together,” the actor said.
“It’s unbelievable as someone who has been doing this work for three decades.”
It was “outstanding” to learn that he was only the second out gay actor to be nominated in the category for playing a gay role, he added.
“Hopefully, I won’t be the last. There are incremental changes, but we need more people to champion these stories. It doesn’t have to look like you to be about you.”
Domingo, who also stars as Albert “Mister” Johnson, in the Oscar-nominated musical The Color Purple, told Deadline that he hopes he has proved gay men can play a range of roles.
“The way I’ve been able to see myself in this industry is that I can play anything, and it’s not limited by my sexuality,” he said.
“People see me as I see myself, and being able to flex all these muscles and play all these different types of men, with very different experiences, hopefully, moves the needle a bit more… I’m a strong representation for that now, and there [are] many more folks coming up right behind me.”
Last year, Domingo spoke exclusively to PinkNews about his desire that Rustin be seen as a “hopeful” movie by the LGBTQ+ community.
“I think [Rustin is] hopeful, especially right now in these dark times, [so] that people have somewhere to look and say: ‘Hey, we can galvanise, we can do something to make this world a little better’.
“These were all just ordinary human beings trying to do something extraordinary. I was drawn to that.”
