For “Rustin,” Wolfe needed an actor who was spirited, intelligent and charismatic, a description that suited Domingo down to the bone. “People who knew Bayard said that when he walked in a room, heads all turned,” Wolfe said. “That seemed very much like Colman.” And Domingo felt validated to have the director pushing for him.
“He got to know me fully as a human being and as a collaborator and someone who could wrestle text with him, and he advocated for me,” Domingo said. “Did he advocate to Netflix? To the Obamas? He advocated to somebody, because he made the decision and it was a direct offer.”
Though the movie is traditional, the role of Rustin is anything but: The furthest thing from a strait-laced activist, he was a flamboyant, out gay man possessed of a self-certainty so contagious that he could persuade just about anyone to link arms with him. “I think he used his higher-pitched, reedy voice as a tool to disarm people,” Domingo said. “A Black queer man running around the world with his mid-Atlantic standard accent, playing the lute and singing Elizabethan love songs? That’s wild!”
And Domingo enjoyed the way Rustin owned his sexuality in the same way he was unafraid to occupy space: “He could still pull men at a bar with three teeth missing.” After Domingo appeared on “The Tonight Show” to discuss “Rustin” with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel, he received an appreciative text from Rachelle Horowitz, an organizer who worked with Rustin: “I think Bayard would want to be remembered as a sexy Black leader,” she told him.
Domingo’s sexuality is something he had to own, too: Though he’s been out since his 20s, it took him time to build the self-confidence he now exudes in spades. “There’s a quote that my husband likes to use: ‘Don’t be born beautiful, be born crafty,’” he said. Once skinny and shy, he’s now a well-built flirt, and he looks for opportunities to invest his characters with the same kinetic energy he learned to summon from within himself: “When I directed my play ‘Dot,’ I remember on the first day I said, ‘I think all the characters are sexy — the elderly woman, the gay couple, the single woman.’ Because you can’t leave sexuality out of roles.”
