2026 could very well be the year of Colman Domingo. He starred in the hit Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, and recently finished playing Ali in HBO’s Euphoria. He directed one episode and also appears on Netflix’s “The Four Seasons.” This weekend, audiences will see him play Hugo in Steven Spielberg’s alien thriller Disclosure Day.
“It’s a matter of taste,” Domingo told Variety when asked why he chose the projects. “I’m very astute at extracting what I think is beneficial to me.”
As a young actor, he often reversed roles with directors and producers. “I want to know the room I’m going to be in. I want to know my collaborators. What will this experience be like? How will it energize me? How will it energize me? Will it give me anything?” he says.
When both Spielberg and Michael director Antoine Fuqua met with Domingo about their respective films, they wanted to know whether he felt he had anything to offer the role or experience.
“As an artist, what a great question!” Domingo says. “It makes you think: What do I have to offer? What can I offer, not just as an actor or an artist, but as a human being? How do we build a set and treat each other? I’m very clear about that.”
Domingo co-stars with Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor in Disclosure Day, which sees Spielberg take a fresh approach to the alien story. The US government is hiding the truth about evidence of alien life and visitation. Hugo is a corporate whistleblower who leads an underground network known as the “Truth Movement.”
Domingo praised Spielberg as a collaborator. The moment this actor came on board, a lot of research was done, and director Spielberg told him, “‘I’ll send you whatever you need so we can establish a brain trust.'” Coleman replied, “Just give it a try.”
Spielberg sent documentaries, footage and research about John E. Mack, a clinical psychologist at Harvard who studied and collaborated with people who had extraterrestrial experiences. “He went on record saying he believed those things to be true. At one point, Harvard didn’t want him to talk about it. Like many people, Harvard started discrediting him in a variety of ways. But it’s so surprising to me The fact that we can believe in magic, we can believe in God, we can believe in all the other things we haven’t seen yet, and yet the idea of believing in UAPs and UFOs is so foreign to people, I wonder why not.
In this film, the idea of extraterrestrial beings is used as a means of economic gain. “Companies want to hold on to information, so naturally they don’t want it to get out into the world. And then there are people, like my character, who believe that this information should be in the hands of the world. Let the world decide, let the world know this information, and maybe it will make us better as a common humanity.”
Domingo, who co-starred with Blunt, O’Connor and Eve Hewson, and worked on Spielberg’s set, admitted he felt awed by himself. “Everyone has such a vivid imagination, and I feel like when you’re being led by Steven Spielberg, you have these really awe-inspiring moments. Not just while you’re actually working, but at some point you stand up above your own body and your experience and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m working on a Steven Spielberg set with these amazing actors.'” “And then we zoom in again, which is great, especially late in my career. The idea that I’m still in awe of the people that I work with is something that Stephen has prepared for us. We have to use our full imagination to invite into stories like this. We hope that this playground that we utilize will bring to us all a shared reverence for the idea of inviting in non-human beings, UAPs, UFOs, whatever we want to call them, and that it will transform our relationships with the world and unite us. ”
Does Domingo believe in aliens?
“Absolutely,” he replied. “And while we don’t know what they look like, what they feel like, what their purpose is, we believe there must be more to it than that. It can’t be just us.”
“So I stand outside and look at the stars and believe that someone is staring back at us, and that someday we will be united. So whatever the unknown brings us, I believe that maybe it will be good for all of us.”
