Colman Domingo Reflects on Euphoria, Directing ‘The Four Seasons’

Colman Domingo has been directed by his fair share of legends, from Steven Spielberg and Ava DuVernay to George Wolfe and Steven Soderbergh. What he’s gleaned from the greats is the necessity of an overarching sense of trust — i.e., talented individuals should be encouraged to do the job that they’ve been hired to do.

“That’s what I want to do with my entire cast and crew,” says Domingo, who sat in the director’s chair for his Netflix series, The Four Seasons, for the first time in season two. “I want people to make choices and come with ideas and decisions.”

An actor by training, Domingo became a director out of circumstance. While pursuing his decades-long theater career, he often would mount his own productions, finding himself in several key positions other than performer. “I had to figure out how to get into the room when I had no access to being in a room, when people wouldn’t allow me to be in the room,” he says. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a producer or director.”

His onscreen directing credits include episodes of his long-running AMC horror series Fear the Walking Dead and an episode in season one of The Four Seasons. Now, he is behind the camera for The Four Seasons‘ second-season premiere episode, “Hiking,” which sees the return of the comedy drama’s central gaggle of middle-aged friends: show creator Tina Fey, Will Forte, Marco Calvani, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Domingo. The group is back together for the first time since the season one finale, in which Erika Henningsen’s 30-something Ginny reveals she’s pregnant by Steve Carell’s recently deceased character, Nick, also the soon-to-be ex-husband of Kenney-Silver’s Anne before his demise. (The show is much funnier than this dark synopsis suggests.)

The season opener is devoted to the friend group attempting to spread Nick’s ashes in upstate New York. (It’s funny, we swear!) Toward the beginning of the episode, the group sits down to eat at a hole-in-the-wall barbecue spot and the camera swings around the table in a sweeping circular motion, capturing everyone laughing, bonding and sharing a meal. It puts the audience right back in the center of the friend group, reacquainting viewers with the characters they fell in love with in season one.

Inspired by shots like the intro of Roseanne and the dinner scenes in Hannah and Her Sisters, Domingo says the staging was purposeful and meant to show “family — and family is what you want to always get back to, no matter what complicated things may happen.”

Running a set, Domingo emphasized bringing as many people into the creative process as possible, making sure that the day players were introduced to everyone in the morning, and that he was available to all departments. Says Fey, “He’s wonderful with the crew in their entirety. He really understands, having worked so long as an actor, how much everyone on set is doing.”

Fey also sees Domingo’s performance background come out when he’s behind the camera, noting, “A lot of times in TV direction, you don’t really get to kind of talk about the acting choices that you’re making, because the days go so quickly. But he’s always, in that way, an actor first, and taking care of making sure everyone feels like they’ve had enough takes.”

Domingo explains, “You’ve got to be the captain of the ship. You’ve got to inspire everyone to bring the best ideas into play. I’m always a ‘yes, and …’ kind of person. I’m like that as an actor, but also as a director.” He adds, “I don’t like to hear the word ‘no’ that often, because I feel like I’m very pragmatic when it comes to budgets and to scope and scale and the size of what’s achievable. I also want people to start with that spirit of ‘yes’ before we’re bogged down with ‘no’s and what we can’t do.”

The Four Seasons‘ second season kicked off right as Domingo’s other TV series, Euphoria, came to an end. Over its three-season run, Domingo’s Ali primarily existed in a diner booth, where he dispensed hard-won wisdom to Zendaya’s Rue, acting as her sponsor and the show’s moral center. In the final two episodes of the HBO drama, Ali takes center stage.

While he has alluded to his past throughout the series, audiences finally see Ali’s previous life as an addict. In flashbacks, he’s shown using, cheating on his wife and having abusive tendencies toward his loved ones. This is revealed as Ali, in the present day, is trying to help Rue navigate her truly untenable position at the center of rival drug lords. Both in the past and in the present, Euphoria uproots Ali from the comfortable four walls of the diner.

“We wanted to unpack a little bit more about Ali and his survival mechanisms, and really see it put to work,” Colman told THR back in April, just as the season started to air. “Instead of him just being philosophical and talking about it, he’s actually going to be more actionable about it.”

After watching Euphoria‘s series finale, “more actionable” is an understatement. Ali, who has been the series’ resident mentor, father figure, listening ear, voice of reason and confidant, transforms into what is most analogous to an action hero in a revenge plot. When Rue overdoses via fentanyl-laced pills, Ali tracks down the man behind the operation, the season’s resident big bad, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), challenging him to an old fashioned duel, with a sawed-off shotgun, no less! In the end, it is Domingo’s Ali who brings down the final curtain on Euphoria.

As episodes rolled out, HBO refused to confirm that the long-awaited third season would be its last. By the time the finale screened, the network and creator Sam Levinson acknowledged the show’s conclusion.

For his part, Domingo is satisfied. Each season, including two hourlong specials, Levinson asked that his cast treat it as if it were the finale. In the end, says Domingo, “I know that I gave it my all.”

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.