Colman Domingo’s “Wild with Happy” finds the magic, healing, and humor in grief

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Yvonne Durant: Hello, listeners. This is Audible Editor Yvonne Durant, and today, with great pride, I'm talking to one of the most outstanding talents of our time. Yes, he is. The very wonderful, multitalented Colman Domingo.

Colman Domingo: Hello.

YD: Most recently an Oscar nominee for his incredible performance in Rustin, as Bayard Rustin, one of the most important figures in the Civil Rights Movement, Mr. Domingo has also won a Tony, a Primetime Emmy, and a Spirit Award, along with many accolades that I can't cover, because I have some questions for you, Colman, about Wild with Happy, your Audible Original based on your play of the same title. I'm really glad that you're here today. I know you had a heavy day, and I'll go easy, okay?

CD: Okay.

YD: So, let's get down to business. Wild brought me right back to Brooklyn. Our babysitter—because I'm a twin—our babysitter's name was Lavinia. I never knew there was another Lavinia in the world.

CD: Really?

YD: She wasn't all that good. We were three years old watching As the World Turns, so I mean, really.

CD: [Laughs].

YD: And I want you to know, I frequently say, “My feet swoll up.” I cracked up at “conundrums, the H is silent.” Because, you know, we do some weird things to the English language.

CD: You know how we name folks. Exactly.

YD: Right? Would you agree that Black people have a good time with the English language? It's almost like speaking in a colorful code.

CD: [Laughs] We had to. We had to have a good time with the English language. I think that's why I write the way I write, because we know how to twist and re-create language as we do with culture. It is a unique skill that we have as Black folks. But I think it's because we've always sort of had to redefine ourselves, so we redefine ourselves in music and with language. So, we can take the English language and make it a whole other situation.

YD: Right. In fact, I was going to ask you about your writing process. I imagine while writing, when you wrote this play, there was some chuckling every now and then. Am I right?

CD: I had to laugh really hard when I was writing it. I think that's when I knew I was on to something. Because I think I write in a way, I guess, that I experienced my whole life, which is I think that there's comedy and drama happening at the exact same time. And I think that when we really examine it, like, I never thought that I write just for drama's sake, because even dealing with death or Alzheimer's or these very dire things, I think that there's always comedy around. And I think that's the way you're supposed to—it helps digest it. I think that we as people, that's how we move through anything, like these unimaginable rigors and horrors of just even our experience being in this country. We've had to laugh. We had to learn how to laugh and figure out how to laugh about a situation.

"The character of Adelaide is very close to my mother... I think that Wild with Happy is an ode to her, sort of."

YD: Yeah, it was hard to come by naturally. In Wild with Happy, you just nailed the drama of the Black funeral. I've been there. I used to write all the obits, and there'd be fights, "You didn't mention Cousin so and so, and that cousin.”

CD: Oh, absolutely.

YD: “And why are you mentioning her first?” But do you think this drama is some sort of mechanism to delay the grief?

CD: Absolutely. Why is somebody going into somebody else's closet, rummaging through and taking everything in the world that they can take? They're actually not trying to get those things. I think that they're trying to hold on to some part of that person.

YD: I agree.

CD: And they need to release as well. That's why I have Aunt Glo rummaging through this closet. Literally, my mother used to tell me, "When I die, don't you let these people come in here before y'all get in here." Because she knew that people come and scavenge, not only because they want to take things, but they're trying to hold on to something of that person. Desperate. And so you start having arguments about like, I remember there was one argument in particular that I was like, "What is happening?" I remember it was a big deal, because my mother loved to wear white and she had this white hat, and I wanted her to wear this whole outfit in the coffin. And some of the old cronies at my mother's church was like, "Oh, you can't put her in a hat. She can't be in a hat." It became this big thing that was about a hat. It was all about this hat and the way things were supposed to be done. Her hair is supposed to be done. No, I'm like, "Well, she liked the hat. She's gonna wear the hat." We had this huge fall-out, knock-down, drag-out argument over a hat.

YD: It's funny talking about wardrobe at that point. Who came first? Colman the actor, or Colman the playwright?

CD: The funny thing is I think Colman the playwright was always there. And I started my career in San Francisco, and I started as an actor, but I was always a writer. I was always a creative writer. At first, I actually went to school for news writing, and I thought that was going to be my journey, as a journalist. But I took an acting class, and that took over. And then my writing became more creative writing. I realized I was actually more of a storyteller than a news writer. So, you know, a little bit of chicken and egg.

YD: I didn't know you were a Philly dog. What is it about Philly that makes great music, cheese steaks, Betsy Ross, soft pretzels, and you?

CD: [Laughs]. And me.

YD: What's happening in Philly?

CD: I think there's something in the water. Philadelphia is such a down-home place. I like to say that people are the salt of the earth there. They don't know how to put on airs. It's just a real blue-collar city and people are very, just, real. And people are very colorful. That's why I always write characters that are based in Philadelphia, because I think that there's so much size. Everyone's sort of living in their own opera, you know, on the daily. And I think the people are very kind, actually, when you really get to know them. They're very warm people.

YD: I love the cast and, to me, while listening, it seemed like a few friends got together and they said, "Let's do it. Let's just get this done. Let's have some fun." How did it happen?

CD: It happened sort of just like that. I started with Kate Navin at Audible, who has always been a champion of Wild with Happy. And I thought it was finally time to revisit it in audible form, which I thought it was always written as if it should have been in audible form, because there's very much, I don't know, I think that there's Foley sound. It's all for your imagination. There's a deconstructed fairy tale element of it. So, all that lives in audio, I think. So, we finally decided “Let's do it,” and then we had to put our wish list together.

And, luckily, I got every single person on my wish list. I actually thought, "You know what? I always thought Oprah should play Adelaide." And I know it seemed like a crazy thought, and I know that this is Oprah's first Audible, and I thought, "Let me just invite her to do this. I feel like she would have fun with this." And she said yes immediately. And, of course, I invited Sharon Washington, who originated, actually, Aunt Glo and Adelaide, and then having Alex Newell, Tony Award winner Alex Newell, and Tyler James Williams from Abbott Elementary. I thought, "This is who I would imagine to do this in this form with me as the director," and they all said yes.

YD: It sounded so very natural. So, you must have been excited when it was at the Public Theater, and now it sounds like you're excited all over again because it's on Audible. I mean, that's pretty cool.

CD: I am. It's kind of cool to revisit some of your old work in a new way. And it shows the, I guess the longevity of the work, because it really is—how can I say?—it's not a play that only exists in a certain time. I think it's a little timeless. I love writers like, you know, I always go to Shakespeare because he writes things that are timeless. I'm not saying I wanted to be the Shakespeare of my generation, but I write things that I feel like it can be anyone's family at any time. Because we're always wrestling with these ideas and these ways to be, and trying to figure out who we are and then who we're going to become. And in the center of it, you're going to have, especially in Wild with Happy, you have the character of death. Death is inevitable, and it's always there, and you're always going to have to learn to wrestle with it. So, that's at the center.

"My mother wanted me to be in these rooms and have Spike Lee and Spielberg know me, and wanted me to be at the Oscars."

YD: I think we're all, you know, of course, there's nothing like a Black family's funeral, but growing up in New York, I went to school with a lot of Jewish people, and I can tell you, there's some drama there too.

CD: Yeah. Well, the whole thing, the funny thing is even when we premiered it at the Public Theater, I would get audiences of every different hue and background saying, "That was my family. That's my sister." Whether it's a Jewish family, a Muslim family, you name it. But it's a family dynamic in a family that is spirited. A family with opinions. And so usually those are the passionate families. You can find one of your characters in Wild with Happy.

YD: Right. So, a little birdie told me that Sharon Washington, your dear friend, a great Tony-nominated performer and a writer, in character once stuffed a prop in her bag onstage as your expression said, "I dare you to take that."

CD: [Laughs]

YD: You know what I’m talking about. Tell me, how did you keep from laughing?

CD: I do. Sharon is one of the most inventive actors that I've worked with, and we had this one moment when we were doing Wild with Happy at Theater Works, after the Public Theater. Theater Works in California. And we were onstage, and our characters spar with each other, and also we work with props as tools and as weapons in a great way. And, literally, she took this, and I looked at her like, "Don't you do it…" And she looked at me and paused, and then lifted it and put it right in her bag. And then it took everything in my whole soul not to fall out laughing, but I had to stay in character and stay with my character's objective, and it was wildly funny.

YD: Your mother, obviously, was very special to you, and this is the second play where there's a mother figure. Is it your mother? Was she this dream and she believed things could be beautiful and just wonderful?

CD: Out of all my plays, Wild with Happy, the character of Adelaide is very close to my mother. My mother was—she believed in magic, and she believed in lottery tickets and writing to Oprah, and she believed in travel, and she was very much a romantic. And I think if she actually followed this path, she would have been a poet, because she lived in poetry. So, I think that Wild with Happy is an ode to her, sort of. And that's why that mother, in particular, lives in the fairy tale. And that mother lives in her own space. Which I think is maybe why I wrote it, that my mother was sort of still laughing and dancing above us as we're down here on this Earth trying to figure things out. She's a memory and a beautiful, sweeping, colorful gown, and listening to music with the princess telephone and still calling on me and still in my mind.

YD: Somewhere on that red carpet, she was walking beside you, behind you.

CD: And she walks in front of me, too. She really does. Everything I do. I think that's what anyone, I think if they have gone through the process of grief, especially losing a parent, you will know that they're always with you. And even if you're not religious or something, I think you do start to understand the continuum of time when you lose a parent. And you go through the process of grief, and then you start to realize, I mean, at least I realized, I can look at my life now and all these things that have even happened to me in my life and with love and relationships and career success, all the dreams that my mother had for me. Also, my stepfather. They had those dreams for me. I actually feel like they were bigger dreams for me than I had for myself. So, I'm actually living out her dreams. I don't know if I'm actually living out mine. I'm living out hers.

YD: Well, you mentioned the Oscars, at the end, toward the end [of the play], don't you mention something about the Oscars?

CD: I do. Isn't that just wild?

YD: I couldn't believe it.

CD: Isn't that wild? It's just wild. Because I wrote about a character who was an actor who was an out-of-work actor in a very hard place. And I wanted to make him a very hardened individual. And the play was pushing him to believe in dreams that he didn't even have for himself. And I guess maybe that's a little bit of me. I just wanted to be a working actor. My mother wanted me to be in these rooms and have Spike Lee and Spielberg know me, and wanted me to be at the Oscars. I didn't know that was available for me. I knew that I wanted to be an artist and work in theaters, and whether basement theaters or regional theaters, and make a living. But all this other stuff, and I guess maybe that's why Wild with Happy is so special to me and important of my work, because there's a lot of the personal that's intertwined with some fiction.

YD: So, I just have to ask, where were you the moment you heard that you'd been nominated for an Oscar?

CD: As you'll know, I was on this whole Oscar run of awards and nominations and all that. And it was building up to that possibility. So, I was actually up that morning. My husband was watching the feed coming in, and I decided I couldn't watch. I was listening, and I heard other friends getting nominated, and then I walked into the bathroom, and I still hear the feed. And I had my phone in my hand, and it gets to the category for Best Actor, and I just got very quiet, and suddenly my phone dinged. And it was my manager saying, "Congratulations, Oscar nominee." And I heard it before my husband heard it on the feed because it came in sooner on the East Coast. And I look over at him, and suddenly I hear my name, and he just slides down on the floor and starts crying.

YD: Aww.

CD: And then I actually react, because I was kind of stunned. And then I actually, tears came to my eyes. And I was just filled with gratitude for, you know, not only the moment, but because I know this was not only for me. It was for so many people who believe in me, for many of my comrades, too. It's for all of us, so I knew it was a great win, just being a nominee.

YD: Well, and I saw Rustin, and when I heard that you were nominated, it was mine, too.

CD: Aww, thank you. Thank you, Yvonne. Thank you. Thank you.

YD: It was like this thing just welled up. I said, "Oh, wow, this is so very cool and wonderful." Well, thank you. I know you've had a long day.

CD: Thank you.

YD: And I'm so happy you did this. Listeners, Wild with Happy is an Audible Original. Download it, and you'll be wild with happy.

CD: Aww.

YD: And you'll be glad you did. Thank you, Colman.

CD: Thank you.

YD: It's so good to see you, and keep on keeping on. All the best to you.

CD: You, too, friend. Thank you.

YD: I'm honored.