2026 might very well be the year of Colman Domingo. He’s in the hit Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” and has recently wrapped up his role as Ali on HBO’s “Euphoria.” He also stars in Netflix’s “The Four Seasons,” in addition to directing one episode. This weekend, audiences will see him as Hugo in Steven Spielberg‘s alien thriller, “Disclosure Day.”
“It’s a matter of taste,” Domingo tells Variety when asked what makes him choose a project. “I’m very incisive when it comes to distilling what I think is useful to me.”
As a young actor, he would often turn the tables on directors and producers. “I want to know the rooms that I’m going to be in. I want to know the collaborators. What is this experience going to be like? How is it going to fuel me? How am I going to fuel it? Do I have anything to give?” he says.
Both Spielberg and “Michael” director Antoine Fuqua wanted to know if Domingo felt that he had something to offer the roles and experiences when he met with them about their respective films.
“What a great question to be asked as an artist!” Domingo says. “It forces you to think: Do I have something to give? What can I offer — not only as an actor and artist but as a human being? How are we going to create the sets and treat each other? I’m very clear about that.”
In “Disclosure Day,” Domingo stars alongside Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor as Spielberg offers a fresh approach on the alien story: The U.S. government is hiding the truth about alien life and evidence of visitations. Hugo is a corporate whistleblower and leads the underground network known as the “Truth Movement.”
Domingo praises Spielberg as a collaborator. The moment the actor came on board, there was a lot of research involved, and Spielberg told him, “’I’ll send you whatever you need, so we can establish a brain trust.” Colman replied, “Bring it on.”
Spielberg sent documentaries, footage and studies on John E. Mack, a clinical psychologist from Harvard, who studied and worked with people who had extraterrestrial experiences. “He chronicled that he believed that they were true. At some point, Harvard didn’t want him to talk about it. They started to discredit him in many ways, as many do. But it’s so amazing to me, the fact that, we can believe in magic, we can believe in God, we can believe in all these other things we haven’t seen yet. Yet the idea of believing in UAPs and UFOs is so foreign to people. I’m like, why not?”
In the film, the idea of extraterrestrial existence is used as a means for financial gain. “The corporation wants to hold it, so of course they don’t want the information to get out there. And then there are some people who believe, like my character, that believe that the world should have this information. Let the world judge, let the world have this information, and maybe it betters us as common humanity.”
Working alongside Blunt, O’Connor and Eve Hewson, and on a Spielberg set, Domingo admits he found himself in awe. “Everyone has such vivid imaginations, and being led by Steven Spielberg, you feel like there are moments when you absolutely are in awe. Not only while you’re in it and doing the work, but at some point you do rise above your own body and the experience and say, ‘Oh my God, I’m working with Steven Spielberg on a Steven Spielberg set with these incredible actors.” He goes on to say, “And then you zoom back in, which is beautiful, especially this late in my career. The idea that I’m still awed by the people that I’m working with – that’s what Steven has set up for us. This playground of really using our imagination to invite in a story like this takes us all to a common awe of the idea of inviting in non-human entities, UAPs, UFOs, whatever we want to call them, and hoping that it transforms our world and unites us.”
Does Domingo believe in aliens?
“I absolutely do,” he answers. “And I don’t know what they look like, what they feel like, what their objectives are, but I do believe that there has to be more. It can’t just be us.”
He adds, “I mean, I stand outside, look at the stars, believing that someone’s staring back at us, and at some point we’ll come together. So I believe that with whatever the unknown brings to us, maybe it’ll be good for all of us.”
