Colman Domingo had three weeks. He was about to go into production on The Color Purple musical film, with pickup shoots for the biopic Rustin scheduled for shortly thereafter. But in the small break between those projects, the actor was theoretically available. He said as much to writer-director Greg Kwedar over Zoom, in their first conversation about Sing Sing.
There was no script yet. No financing. Still, those three weeks looked good to Kwedar. “I was like, ‘I’ll take them,’” the director says with a laugh. “‘I guarantee you we can be ready to shoot.’” Domingo recalls being taken aback—and impressed: “It was crazy, but I liked that spirit. I like people who are on the edge that way.” That leap of faith has resulted in one of the year’s best, most innovative, and surprising films.
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In 2016, Kwedar and his longtime cowriter Clint Bentley were introduced to Sing Sing Correctional Facility’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, which immerses incarcerated people into the worlds of theater, dance, and more. The pair shadowed RTA’s leadership, taught workshops, and got to know some of the program’s alumni. They saw how it quite literally saved lives. Sing Sing is the product not just of that extensive research period, but also the direct testimony of people who were formerly incarcerated and rediscovered themselves through the program. Marking Kwedar’s first directorial effort since his feature debut Transpecos (2016), it’s a startling, raw piece of work.
Yet the timing of Sing Sing’s world premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival seemed potentially unfortunate. Fewer eyeballs than usual were on the event due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, which prevented most talent from attending. Sing Sing was also an especially unknown entity as it sought US distribution. But the independent movie had secured an interim agreement from the actors’ union, meaning Domingo, an executive producer who also plays the lead role, could attend the fest (despite not being able to support his other movie there, Netflix’s Rustin, which would go on to net him his first Oscar nomination). Some supporting cast joined him—no small feat, since 13 of the Sing Sing actors are RTA alumni, and anyone convicted of a felony is not typically permitted to travel to Canada. After six months of work with top immigration attorneys, five actors were ultimately cleared to fly just two days before the screening.
How did it go? Well, nine or so months later, I’m sitting with Domingo and Kwedar in Los Angeles’ London Hotel, where Sing Sing is screening for Academy members and press. The movie was a smash in Toronto, swiftly acquired by A24, and is slated for a July 12 release. It’s been playing all over the country at regional festivals since, meeting teary standing ovations from coast to coast; the awards buzz is already deafening. But perhaps more importantly, audiences are discovering and falling hard for the film. “We have a long, long road ahead,” Domingo tells me. “But I love the way the seeds are being planted for this. It feels very organic and very thoughtful—it’s not just a big blast. It’s letting it be something for the people.”
Kwedar agrees: “It mirrors our process of how we made it.”
The big idea for Sing Sing was to recapture the big feelings of the RTA program: the energy, the heartbreak, the triumph. But every time the filmmakers started outlining a screenplay, it felt all wrong—an “imitation,” Kwedar says, of what they witnessed in those spaces. Then they landed on the real-life story of two RTA members who formed a profound bond: John “Divine G” Whitfield, a dancer and aspiring actor who says he was convicted of a homicide he did not commit, and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, once among Sing Sing’s most feared inmates. They met in RTA and supported each other through some of their darkest moments. Their bond would be the heart of the film.
“I wrote a treatment out in about 10 minutes of that story, and at the very bottom of that treatment, I wrote, ‘Colman Domingo as Divine G,’” Kwedar says. “I just manifested that sh*t.”
Domingo wound up being one of only a handful of professional screen actors to appear in the movie, a short list that also includes Oscar nominee Paul Raci, who plays the program’s director Brent Buell, and Domingo’s close friend Sean San José, who portrays Divine G’s roommate in prison. “I realized that if I’m one of the rare film actors in it, I’ve got to continue to find a place to be generous and help my partners,” Domingo says. “But also, they’re going to help me do something different. Land me in a different space of performance that maybe I haven’t been in ever before.”
He’s not kidding. Domingo has certainly showcased his transformative abilities in projects like Rustin, The Color Purple, and Zola—but here, he is utterly, emotionally naked. You can feel the ensemble keeping him on his toes too. “How hard to both command every scene but to be generous at the same time and to lift everyone up around you—I marvel at it every time I see the film,” Kwedar says softly, turning to Domingo between sips of his old-fashioned. “There’s so much of you that exudes through this performance—you’re someone who rightfully takes up space, but knows everyone in the room, and looks everyone in the eyes and listens.”
Kwedar’s visual approach centers his actors, appropriate for a movie about the power of theater and acting. “[Cinematographer] Pat Scola was like, ‘Oh, this is a movie about the landscape of the human face,’” Kwedar says. “What happens when you look someone in the eyes, in an unflinching way? What stories does the face tell?” Domingo has nowhere to hide in this movie, and makes every moment count. The same goes for his costar, Divine Eye himself.
