Colman Domingo On Cutler Being a Brother to Levee and a Friend to Ma for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

Colman Domingo is the consummate actor and he always disappears so deeply into his roles. He wants to honor the men he plays and that dedication and attention to detail comes from his theater experiences. As the band leader, Cutler, Domingo is the ultimate supporting actor. He lends emotional support to Viola Davis’ Ma and Chadwick Boseman’s Levee whether the rest of the characters in this August Wilson adaptation know it or not. In the end, however, Cutler tells us of some of the horrors that he has seen, and it’s almost we can see it happening before our very eyes.

The rest of the band gives Levee a lot of flack for his verve and pride, but the banter is all in good fun. There is an intrinsic trust between these four men and that allows the truth to be spoken freer than one might expect. Domingo gives Cutler the presence that whenever a decision needs to be made, your head turns in his direction to hear his input. He is the only person in the band that Ma trusts, and that’s evident in the scenes between Domingo and Davis.

Domingo talked passionately about diving into Cutler’s faith and how he admires Levee’s ambition. If Cutler had that drive when he was Levee’s age, he might be in an entirely different place in his life. Cutler is both a father figure and a friend to many people in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but his fears and his truth come out towards the end. It’s a beautiful, subtle performance, and Domingo isn’t done with August Wilson yet.

Awards Daily: You are from Philadelphia, and August Wilson is from Pittsburgh. What as it to film in there with that history?

Colman Domingo: It was great. The idea of being close to the Hill District and breathing the same air as August Wilson and you knew the characters because of the people who were there. Whether you jut met people randomly in coffee shops or people watching. That’s what I do with any city where I’m shooting. I go where the locals go and I take in the city. I find out where the best food is. I don’t do tourist-y things. I go where the people are. August Wilson’s whole ear is leaned into the people of Pittsburgh. I loved Pittsburgh.

AD: Had you ever been there before?

CD: Never been there before, but I knew of it as a steel town. Pittsburgh Steelers, and that kind of thing. I think the thing that’s similar between the people of Philadelphia and the people of Pittsburgh is that people are truly the salt of the earth. What you see is what you get. No airs. That’s a Pennsylvania thing, to be honest. August Wilson does a lot with people that have come up during The Great Migration from Georgia and Alabama and they found work in these urban areas. But they are still very Southern. That felt familiar. Real hometown people.

AD: There is an almost underdog quality to the people who are from there.

CD: Exactly.

AD: If you insult the people of Pittsburgh, it will be the last think you ever do.

CD: That’s the same with the people of Philly. Even on social media, I’ll be like, ‘I’m from Philly…don’t come for me.’ At the end of the day, you don’t see the Philly people coming, and we’ll keep coming just like the people from Pittsburgh,

AD: I wanted to talk about Cutler and Levee. At the beginning of the film, the band is making its way to the recording studio and Cutler says something about seeing Levee out at a bar, and the rest of the band playfully gives Levee a hard time throughout the film. They pick up on his ambition and his talent but they sort of remind him that he is young and still needs to work his way up a little.

CD: Bingo. I think you hit it right on the head. I think that it’s a very complicated role to play. His language, if you just look at it on a surface level, sounds like we are putting Levee down a lot and we are putting him down a lot. There is a key line earlier in the play that tells you who Cutler is, and that’s when Cutler is away from the band and he is with Ma. He’s defending Levee. In the room, the guys are coming at Levee a certain way, but he tells Ma that Levee is all right. He writes music well too. In that moment, you can see what Cutler thinks about Levee. He’s taking him on as a big brother. He hired him, but he wants him to find his way in it. He knows he’s got talent–maybe even more talent than he has. He admires that in him. It is that tricky relationship, and, I’ll be honest, I’ve had that before in my life where the person looks up at you and admires you but also digs at you. I think Levee admires Cutler a lot too, and that’s why he comes for Cutler a lot.

AD: He definitely does. 

CD: He’s trying to prove himself but the first person he calls for when he plunges that knife into Toledo is Cutler. That shows the level of care and brotherhood between them. He says, ‘Cutler, help me.’ I take moments like that to find the truth and the baseline for their relationship and all the sparring is on top of that. The baseline is a certain amount of respect and admiration for each other. That’s what Chadwick [Boseman] tried to put in there. You can play mad or whatever, but it’s much more interesting to add the complicated parts that have moments of joy and brotherhood.

AD: And they can come for each other more because of that safety net of love and respect. 

CD: Of course.

AD: You brought up a scene with Ma, and I was wondering if you could tell me about the care in building that relationship. It’s different than the bond he has with the guys down in the rehearsal space. 

CD: There had to be such a depth of respect between Cutler and Ma for Ma to allow him to be her proxy. In every way, he’s the voice of Ma. She has given Cutler power in her own power structure in her own micro chasm of the world, this openly gay, Black woman truly has agency. Cutler has attached himself to Ma and he has power because of it. We had those tiny, isolate scenes and he’s the only one who has those with her. It allows her to be vulnerable and she can get some things off her chest. You get more into the interior life of Ma through the scenes with Cuter. I wanted to make sure that he was deferential but he also knew what to say. It’s all in his language. I talked to George C. Wolfe, because I thought it was important for them to touch at some point.

AD: Oh yeah?

CD: Yeah, it’s important because she’s blustering and going through the world with so much angst but you we needed to show some tenderness. Viola [Davis] loved that idea as well and at the end of the scene she says, ‘Well, that’s all right by me’ and grabs my hand. The moment the door opens, they separate very quickly. Cutler doesn’t want others to see that part of Ma because he wants him to respect her. Cutler is very much a feminist and he might not know that he is a feminist, but he wants people to always see Ma as powerful. He wants to keep her elevated.

AD: There is a part when Sylvester is struggling with the introduction and someone says, “The guys say that he can’t do it, Ma” and she turns around and looks at everyone in the band and I was like, ‘Oh, shit…’

CD: (laughs)

AD: I thought she was going to go off on you because you’re in that shot. She clearly trusts you. 

CD: You notice that she says what she means, but she knew it was Cutler. I got very still because I was bracing myself for what was going to happen. George and I talked about it–I could’ve been fired. But I did it in service of Ma. I want her to win but I didn’t know Mr. Irvin was going to rat me out (laughs). Ma knew it was Cuter, but she respects him to not go off. In some ways, I think she knows I’m right, but she has a stronger reason. Just give Sylvester time. It shows how much she cares. She’s not just blustering and being unreasonable. We got the time, so let’s just wait and see if the kid can pull it off.

AD: And you can hear the tenderness when she talks to Sylvester. 

CD: I just love that she shares her peanuts with him.

AD: Yeah, you’re right. The energy in that room downstairs with you four men is so incredible to me. I feel like I can hear the voices bouncing off the walls and I love how the camera moves around down there. It’s a small space, kind of dark, smoky. Tell me what it was like to have so much energy with these other actors. 

CD: It was one of the joys of my career. It’s rare that you get to be in the space with people who come to the work with the same commitment that you do. There is no ego. Any question or interrogation was in service to the word. Chad didn’t come in as Black Panther. He came in ready to play. No one came in with an idea of how they were going to play the role. Everyone’s response was in response to what you were giving them We had our objectives and our detailed work as performers and then you are open to spar in the ring. You don’t know what Chad is going to bring or Glynn [Turman] is going to bring or what Michael [Potts] is going to bring but you’re playing off each other. It’s very organic. I recently watched a scene the other day, and there is a beautiful alchemy happening there. There’s a kinetic energy and George is picking it up with his camera lens. The camera is moving around to capture all that and that takes an enormous amount of trust. I think that’s rare to have his actors perform and live their truth. We laughed a lot and I hosted dinner parties and I know that’s how you get to know people.

AD: You have an incredible monologue towards the end of the film and then it leads into Levee telling you, ‘Your God ain’t shit.’ What was it like to get grounded into that speech? You sometimes speak in a whisper as you tell this emotional story about a man of faith. 

CD: Thank you. As I was building Cutler–and August Wilson gives us so much–I knew he was a man of God. That’s his touchstone and his benchmark. He’s probably at church when he’s at home or with his lady, but when he’s on the road, he keeps a bible with him. He’s truly a man of faith which is why he brings up the story of this reverend and why he tells what happens to him at the hands of white people in 1927. That injustice and the complete demoralization for someone who is a man of faith. What they do to him is inhumane and beyond disrespectful. He calls upon that story and I wanted to make the choice that he was so committed. The situation recently happened. You dial up everything you need to make the action a bit more visceral. In my mind, I said it happened last week, so it was still stinging. With an August Wilson monologue, you start it and you don’t know where you’re going. It’s not about me. What do I want from the other actor? And the other characters? Why do I tell it in such detail? I do a lot of script analysis, and this is the only monologue in the script that’s interrupted.

AD: I never thought of that. You’re right. 

CD: Everyone else gets to tell their story but this monologue, at the end of the story, is interrupted by Levee constantly. Levee won’t let him tell his story. You tell your story so everyone can tell theirs. Levee doesn’t want me to tell this story so this question of faith, I’m going straight of the wound. He doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to hear it. He keeps trying to derail me, and Cutler keeps going deeper and deeper into the story. He finally can’t take it anymore, and he interrupts it. If you step on Levee’s shoes, you don’t know what he’s carrying with that. But if you interrupt a man’s story, especially a story that is so deeply rooted in him, you’re basically stepping on his soul. That’s why, I think, he took it so far. He couldn’t find word for it anymore. Cutler could quell anything, and at the beginning, I wanted to make the choice that he approaches it with a smile. Anything that’s getting in his way. He smiles a lot in the beginning of the film. He’s overcompensating because that’s part of survival. Look on the other side, keep it connected to God, keep moving. By the end, the smile has gone away, because he’s been battered. They wipe the smile off his face. I thought that by the time Levee says what he says, Cutler has no words. He has no choice but to sock him in the mouth. I’ve seen that scene a few times, and it hurts Cutler to hit another human being. It hurts him. Everybody has their breaking point.

AD: Speaking of the monologue, I had wondered if that was the first time Cutler talked about it out loud. 

CD: I don’t think he has. He kept that to himself because it was so rattling that it would happen to a man of God. He’s the only character who does a lot of code switching. He’s a different person from when he’s with the band and with Ma to when he’s talking with Mr. Irvin and the producer. He has to. It’s part of his survival, and you start to see the pain of a man who is trying to get by in his life and do good.

AD: I’m glad that we are getting this impressive interpretations of August Wilson’s work or the August Wilson Cinematic Universe. If you could select a role from the 10 play cycle, is there one that jumps out at you? 

CD: Hmm.

AD: I’m sure there are many. 

CD: I like the out there philosophers that he has in his work. He has one in Two Trains. I played Gabriel in Fences on stage, so I can’t do that. I love his worlds, and I’m open to many of his characters. I’m also, more than anything, interested in directing one. These are epic undertakings, and they have to be done by people who know his worlds, his language, and how to open it into the cinematic universe. I feel like I’d like to direct one. So, see if you can work that out, Joey.

AD: I’m on it. 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is streaming now on Netflix.