Colman Domingo SNL Monologue: Euphoria Star creates atmosphere
Colman Domingo made his “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut on Saturday night — and if you’re not sure where you know him from, he has a few guesses. Probably several.
Kicking off his monologue, Domingo acknowledged that his resume is difficult to pin down after three decades in the business. The answer to the question of where you saw him, he suggested, can actually be found anywhere — by rattling off credits including “Fear the Walking Dead,” “Sing Sing,” “The Four Seasons,” “Lincoln” — and a few more in which he didn’t appear.
“I was Carly in ‘iCarly.’ I was in the C-3PO suit in “Star Wars.” And I’m your uncle too.’ He pauses. “You saw me at your cousin’s wedding in 1994.” The point, he said: “I’m pretty much in everything, like raisins at a Caucasian cookout.”
He added that he can usually tell which project someone knows him from. “If you’re a Latin brother, I’m like, oh, ‘Fear the Walking Dead.’ But if it’s a girl under 20 or a creepy dude over 30, that’s ‘Euphoria.’”
With the references established, Domingo turned to his actual agenda for the evening: vibes. Particularly the kind he said he serves when you come to his house. “Tonight I’m going to make you feel like you’re at my home,” he said, then focused the entire production on that goal.
He called for music and lighting “that is extremely flattering to people of color.” Once he was satisfied, he turned to the cameras and issued his next directive: “Can I get a sexy slow press on this?” Then he joked: “I’m 56 too, so boom.”
Cast member Jeremy Culhane, called in for the monologue, was instructed to look into the camera. What followed was a wide-eyed look into the wrong camera that, once the crew found the right angle, turned into a disturbing mog.
Domingo then made his way to the audience and worked the crowd with the ease of someone who has basically been doing this since the ’90s. When he asked a woman what brought her to the show, she said she got tickets from someone who worked there. “Internal connection,” Domingo said approvingly. “That’s hot.” He asked if it was anyone in the cast. “No,” she said. “It was a writer.” Domingo jokingly returned to the audience in disappointment. “Don’t say that to people.”
Towards the end the atmosphere had apparently worn off a bit – a couple in the audience was making out. “They’re straight,” Domingo joked. “You don’t see that every day.”
He wrapped things up the way he said he always ends a party at his house: by telling everyone to leave so he can take a fiber pill and go to bed — but not tonight. “We have a show to do, so boom!”
Watch Domingo’s monologue below.
