Colman Domingo is preparing to make his scandalous film directorial debut.
The 54-year-old Emmy-winning Belizean-Guatemalan American actor and activist will make his film directorial debut in Scandalous, a fast-tracked Miramax drama about the clandestine love affair between film star Kim Novak and singer/dancer and film star Sammy Davis Jr. in 1957.
Sydney Sweeney will play Novak, and David Jonsson will play Davis.
The plan is to shoot the film — imagine a film about classic Hollywood being shot in Los Angeles — when Domingo and Sweeney complete Season 3 of the HBO series Euphoria.
Much the way she did with the sleeper hit Anyone But You, Sweeney was active in putting this one together and she’ll be a producer along with Tani Cohen and Bobby Rock, with Jon Levin executive producing.
Matthew Fantaci wrote the script.
Before he became Miramax CEO, Jon Glickman originated the project at Panoramic, and remained high on it.
Novak, star of Vertigo, and Rat Pack member Davis were at the peak of star power when they met while guests on The Steve Allen Show. They fell hard for each other, but as rumors spread, the rampant racism in America threatened to derail their careers. Novak experienced the ire of Harry Cohn, the Columbia Pictures chief who had the actress under contract. Their covert affair became big news when a Chicago gossip columnist in early 1958 wrote a detailed account of their relationship, including their plans to marry. This despite their denials. Davis nine days later married a Black chorus girl named Loray White.
Domingo is coming off acclaimed turns in Rustin and Sing Sing, and he’s also working on a film about Nat King Cole that he would star in and direct.
He has directed television in the past and he’s currently in production on Netflix and Tina Fey’s The Four Seasons and he has the Netflix limited series The Madness. He also plays Joe Jackson in the Michael Jackson biopic Michael.
Lights Out: Nat King Cole, which Domingo wrote with director Patricia McGregor, will premiere at New York Theater Workshop in the spring, after it premiered at the Geffen Theater in 2019.
