- Have a seat. - Thank you.
- I love the name Colman Domingo, it sounds like an actor.
- Aw, thank you so much.
(chuckles)
- And you have a great voice.
- Thank you.
- Did you ever do any announcing and see,
you could be going, "right on."
(laughing)
- I've never done any announcing but I also,
I used to always wanna be on the radio, like,
I have a face for radio. - Right.
(laughing)
- You know what I mean, how you just wanna be like,
"hi, you're listening to the smooth sounds of chill."
something like that. - You're very good, yeah.
You could interpret some Barry White.
- Yeah, that's a good, yeah I will.
"right on, right on, right on."
- Can you give me a, "Love you baby."
- Oh, "I'd love to love you baby."
(audience cheers)
- It works I guess.
- I'll tell you how effective, I'm getting turned on.
(laughing)
That's how effective it is.
Now, tell me about Philly.
Were you a cheesesteak guy growing up?
- Oh I'm a cheesesteak guy. - Okay.
- Still, yeah, still.
But not right now on the whole 30 but,
in Philly, anybody who goes to Philly
you have to figure out which cheesesteak you love.
- Right.
- Do you like Geno's, do you like Pat's?
- Geno's and Pat's.
I'm independent. - Have you experienced them?
Yeah.
- I can go either way, depending on the particular steaks.
- But I have to ask you, do you like Cheez Whiz on yours?
- I opt for the provolone, but that's-
- Oh, look at you,
see, this is a man who really knows cheesesteak.
- See that is, that is my Italian heritage.
- Yeah.
- Cheez Whiz, just the name Whiz turns me off.
(laughing)
I don't want any Whiz on my,
you know when people say.
- You don't want any whiz on your, cheesesteak.
- You know what, first time I had one,
"hey, you want some Whiz on that?"
No.
(laughing) No, I don't want Whiz on it.
- They're like, "dude, it's just craft, It's just craft."
- I know, but Whiz it just-
- Fried onions?
- Anything that comes out of a can, cheese in a can.
I don't know.
So to me, the provolone, the guy cuts it
and puts a nice piece on there.
- But do you like it to look neat or sloppy,
because Philly it's gotta be a mess
and it looks like it's gonna get all over you.
- Either way is fine, I can.
- I'm not judging you.
- I'm not Orthodox, I'm reformed cheesesteak.
(laughing)
So I could go sloppy.
Orthodox would be the, yeah,
but the reformed cheesesteak yeah, that is very good.
When you go back, do you ever lose your taste for it?
Or did you go back and go,
"I don't eat that anymore, I'm in Hollywood now."
- You know what, no.
I think you just lose all of that.
Everything goes out of the window.
Being an actor, being in Hollywood.
I just eat everything meaty, cheesy and greasy.
- Now this is season two of Euphoria.
- Yeah.
- Tell us about your character and what's going on.
Cause it's a really heavy show.
- Yeah and this season is even darker,
if anyone can imagine, than last season.
I think that you're watching addicts,
especially our central character played by
the phenomenal Zendaya.
(audience clapping)
She's incredible.
And the whole cast, they're incredible.
But you're watching everyone really
in this crisis in their lives,
especially watching an addict go deep into the dark side.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And I play Rue's sponsor named Ali.
And, last, actually we just had an episode
where there is a break in their relationship.
They've had, such a trust with each other as being addicts
and he just wanted to hold her accountable for her actions.
He's not truly trying to offer her,
he's trying to offer her hope.
- Right, right.
- And I think and be conscious of her choices
and how it affects her family and community.
And that's it.
I think that's what he's hopefully doing.
- Right.
- But he's also dealing with someone who is,
she is going deeper into her addiction.
- Yeah.
- And so then there's a rift between the two of them.
- And that's realistic.
That tells you when, I always hate these shows,
they are 42 minutes long but at the end of the show,
"By golly, I'm not an addict anymore."
And it's not really realistic.
- No, this is going dark.
It's Sam Levinson who is our writer-director and showrunner.
That's his, a lot of his experience that he puts in there.
He puts his heart and his soul in there.
And the conversations that I think,
that are very uncomfortable to have.
But I think that he's,
I think there's a lot of glitter and great camera moves,
but then he stripped it down to make sure,
that it's actually, there's some cautionary tales.
He also does a beautiful thing by he, makes sure
with a lot of my scenes that I take,
I'm sort of in a silo with the Rue character.
We're at meetings,
we're in alleys talking,
we're at a diner with a special episode
that we did last season.
But, what he does so beautifully is that he puts someone,
my friend, Marsha, who I wanted to talk about.
Marsha is in a lot of scenes.
She may be running the meeting.
She is also the waitress at this, in the special episode.
- Right.
- And she's actually, a recovering addict.
And she will always tell you her stories,
funny, dark, weird, painful.
But you're responsible to that in a scene.
You're like, I don't really have to do a lot of acting.
What I need to do is be responsible to this woman
in her story and story of other addicts.
And that's how we'll get to the truth
of what we're trying to say in the series.
The series is for everything.
It's like a great album.
You'll pull whatever you need out of it.
- I've got you, I've got you.
- You know what I mean.
- Now, do you pull from your own life.
Have you had any experience with this kind of thing?
It's amazing to me, almost everyone,
I almost wonder how insurance companies make money.
I know this sounds dumb, but everybody I know has somebody
in some kind of rehab these days.
- Absolutely. I mean look at this world.
- It's mental or PTSD or, it's drugs something.
It just seems so prevalent that.
- It is very prevalent because we live in some dark times
and that's just the honest truth.
And I think that there's so many people that are struggling
and struggling with abuse issues, in many forms.
And I think that for me,
I know many people that it's impacted.
It's impacted relatives.
It's impacted so many loved ones.
And, I get such beautiful messages,
whether it's on Twitter or Instagram or something
with people saying, thank you so much for playing
a character like this.
I feel like I'm not alone. - That's great.
- I can go on another day. - Well, that's great.
Hey, well listen, Euphoria, it airs Sundays
on HBO and HBO Max.
And, there's a great Philly cheesesteak place here.
- I think we should go.
- We'll go, yeah, we'll see what you get, Whiz or provolone.
All right.