SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details about The Madness.
As the country’s sociopolitical infighting intensifies, Colman Domingo hopes that his latest series can cut through the noise.
In watching The Madness, now streaming on Netflix, the Oscar nominee tells Deadline that he wants audiences to “look at the whole picture,” especially in the wake of the presidential election.
“I think the show is asking you … don’t just take what’s given to you,” explained Domingo. “But go a little deeper to actually look who’s behind curtain number three, four, five and six, and how it benefits them, the idea that you need to continue to believe what you believe and keep yourself separate from each other. And it keeps a chasm between us instead of you taking in all the information.”
Created by Stephen Belber, The Madness follows CNN pundit Muncie Daniels on a work sabbatical in the Poconos to write the great American novel, where he finds himself the only witness to the murder of a well-known white supremacist. Now, he’s being framed for the crime.
As he’s forced to go on the run in a desperate fight to clear his name and unravel a global conspiracy, Muncie finds unlikely allies against the corrupt billionaire ultimately pulling the strings.
Colman Domingo as Muncie Daniels in ‘The Madness’
Amanda Matlovich/Netflix
“Isn’t that strange?” said Domingo playfully. “A billionaire who’s just about the corporations of America running things and being the puppeteer of it all. It’s very strange. Is it a conspiracy or is it real? I don’t know, you decide.”
He explained that the series from showrunners Belber and VJ Boyd explores “who’s fueling what story and what narrative, to keep us in our silos instead of keeping us together. Because it doesn’t benefit the people, it benefits the corporations.”
Domingo ultimately related to the pressures of trying to make a difference in the world while under the spotlight of fame, noting that The Madness represents the kind of stories he wants to platform.
“I’m very conscious of if I’m making a difference and being a man of my word and doing things that matter in the world, even in my work. I can absolutely see it. I can see the lines of my work very clearly, because I’m very conscious of it. I’m not just gonna take the next thing that’s gonna bring me a lot of access and money or platform,” explained Domingo.
“I feel like I’ve always been very patient in that way. I mean, I’ve been playing the long game,” he added with a laugh. “But for me, at the core, I really want to be intentional, and I know what I’m building. I’m very conscious of what I’m building, a legacy of really complicated stories about Black and Brown men and families, and hopefully that makes a difference in our world.”
Read on about Colman Domingo’s experience making The Madness, its post-election relevance and the possibility of a Season 2.
DEADLINE: Tell me about this CNN pundit character you’re playing, Muncie Daniels. Were there any pundits that or news anchors that inspired you?
COLMAN DOMINGO: I was inspired by many of them. I feel like I can call on people like my friend Jonathan Capehart or my other friend Don Lemon, Van Jones. I feel like anyone who is really on this platform, who is really expressing strong opinion, I was like, “That’s who he is.” But then I also wanted to create a character that was a bit more centrist in their views, someone who is not really advocating one way or the other. He’s just basically saying he believes in our humanity, and at the baseline, that we can sit across from the table and all talk it out if given the opportunity and find the light in the darkness. So, I think that’s essential to who Muncie is in the world. And I love that we started with that, and then he has to get out into the world, and the world is helping him question, “Do you really believe that? Or do you have to believe in something else and find a new version of yourself out in the world?” Because once your celebrity goes away, your education goes away, and you’re just perceived as another Black man in the world who’s accused of a heinous crime, who are you? Now you’ve got to put on some new armor and you have to have a new definition of yourself out in the world and redefine that and establish friendships and need with people that you thought you had no friendship and need with. So, it really does disrupt everything you thought, or at least really expands that view. I think that’s what the show’s about, because I think “the madness” is not only internal, but it’s also external at the same time.
DEADLINE: And it feels like a lot of that is very relevant and important right now, coming out of this election, especially these themes of disinformation and the whole cult mentality of one side versus the other.
DOMINGO: I think the show is asking you, I think that’s what VJ Boyd and Stephen Belber, my showrunners, were really interested in. Let’s ask the questions. Don’t just take what’s given to you. But go a little deeper to actually look who’s behind curtain number three, four, five and six, and how it benefits them, the idea that you need to continue to believe what you believe and keep yourself separate from each other. And it keeps a chasm between us instead of you taking in all the information. But the thing is with news, I was a journalism major when I went to college. And I believed that the news was news, that it was fact-based, and it wasn’t opinion-based, and then we moved into the 24-hour news cycle, and now it’s just a swirl of information coming at you, and opinion. So, then you don’t even know what to believe actually, because it’s so far away from just the truth. That’s it. It’s now opinion, and it’s shaded and colored, and I think that the show is trying to get you to distill, distill, distill down to get back to the essentials, which is just the truth again.
Colman Domingo as Muncie Daniels in ‘The Madness’
Courtesy Netflix
DEADLINE: I do appreciate how at the end, both sides found a common enemy in this rich guy who doesn’t care about any of them.
DOMINGO: Isn’t that strange? A billionaire who’s just about the corporations of America running things and being the puppeteer of it all. It’s very strange. Is it a conspiracy or is it real? I don’t know, you decide. But I love that Stephen and VJ were very interested in exploring that, “Who is pulling the strings? What is America made of? What underneath our politics and the lobbyists, and who’s controlling that?” And the reality, yes, there’s a lot of money controlling it, and it’s helping people to examine who’s fueling what story and what narrative, to keep us in our silos instead of keeping us together. Because it doesn’t benefit the people, it benefits the corporations. So, I think that I think that’s pretty simple, and we’re just saying, we just need you to look at the whole picture. Don’t just believe what’s been fed to you.
DEADLINE: And another part of Muncie that’s very central to who he is, is his family. So it’s kind of heartbreaking to see how a lot of this ends up affecting his family.
DOMINGO: Yeah, because I think he hasn’t been doing it right. I think maybe that’s it. I think that he’s sort of been given this gift that he didn’t want of disrupting his whole life, because he’s got to rethink and reshape his relationship with his wife and with his two kids and his community, which he believed that he was advocating for. But I think, somehow celebrity sort of moved him away from it in a way, became more about the self instead of the us.
DEADLINE: Is that something that you relate to as an actor, being in the public eye and juggling those two parts of yourself?
DOMINGO: But it’s true. I guess to a certain extent, yes, I think I’ve received celebrity so late in my career that it’s not something I’m feeding off of like I believe Muncie has been. It’s new, it’s shiny, it’s interesting. He’s got all the toys and the things. But then there’s no substance, and I think that’s the question that his son and his daughter and his wife, they’re questioning. Who are you? What are you really made of? Are you just a Rolex and a Range Rover or are you more? Because before, you used to be about something, but now you’re so more fascinated with all the other trappings of it. So who are you? They believed in one man and he’s sort of a shell of that. And so it’s about him getting back to that essential core of what matters to him. I think that’s something I’m very conscious of. I’m very conscious of if I’m making a difference and being a man of my word and doing things that matter in the world, even in my work. I can absolutely see it. I can see the lines of my work very clearly, because I’m very conscious of it. I’m not just gonna take the next thing that’s gonna bring me a lot of access and money or platform. I feel like I’ve always been very patient in that way. I mean, I’ve been playing the long game. [LAUGHS] But for me, at the core, I really want to be intentional, and I know what I’m building. I’m very conscious of what I’m building, a legacy of really complicated stories about Black and Brown men and families, and hopefully that makes a difference in our world.
Colman Domingo as Muncie Daniels in ‘The Madness’
Amanda Matlovich/Netflix
DEADLINE: And I love seeing at the end, he is teaching history and it seems like he’s more fulfilled in that part of himself.
DOMINGO: Yeah, and I think what I like about that, I feel like there’s not a period put on the show. It’s an awakening and an opening of a door, and I like to believe that he’s teaching — I don’t know if it’s temporary or if he’s a guest speaker or what — but I know he’s trying to reconnect and re-engage. And he knew that something about that felt good. I’m a teacher as well. I know that when I get into a classroom, it reminds me of why I do what I do, ’cause at some point, you can just do it by rote and you’re just going from job to job. You don’t know why you’re doing it, why you care about it. But I know when I go and I teach, I’m reinvigorated and I know exactly. I can see how impressionable I am to young people and how I can make a difference and how good that feels, being in service. I think generally for me, that moment is watching him being in service again, not just be in the three-ring circus, but he’s actually in service again, which is actually at his core what he hoped to do on a platform like CNN, but then he just put on a red nose and the three circles drawn and he was a a barker in the in the circus. And he wanted to unplug from that and get back to his roots.
DEADLINE: You said there’s not a period on the end of the show, so does it feel like there’s a potential for Season 2? It feels like he’s still looking over his shoulder at the end.
DOMINGO: Listen, I don’t really say this a lot about any show because I like going from moment to moment and having great moments in a show and moving on with my life and doing something else. This show, I think there’s more from Muncie. I would really love to engage with a Season 2, so we’ll see if people think he’s got more story in him as well, so I hope people watch.