Exclusive: Did You Know Colman Domingo Called In His Real BFF To Play His Best Friend In ‘Sing Sing’?

One of the most highly acclaimed films of this year, SING SING is in theaters everywhere this week.

Source: R1 / R1

The film stars Colman Domingo as Divine G, a man who has been imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit. He finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men , including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin). The film stars an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors, including Maclin.

Check out the trailer below:

GlobalGrind Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden spoke with Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin about working with real life friends, filming in actual prisons and keeping mental health in mind while acting out stressful situations.

Source: A24 / Sing Sing

Maclin, who is an alum of Sing Sing’s RTA program, opened up about making his feature film debut alongside Colman Domingo.

“I feel great to do this film right here,” Maclin told GlobalGrind about making his debut.

“A lot of the actors that I watched, Denzel’s up there, that’s my brother,” Maclin said when asked about his onscreen inspirations. “I like Tom Hanks, I like Nick Nolte. I like the heavyweights, the older guys.”

Clarence Maclin Says He’s Not Just Playing Himself In ‘Sing Sing’

Maclin also clarified that the version of ‘Divine Eye’ who he plays in Sing Sing isn’t exactly him.

“I drew a lot from experiences that I witnessed, behaviors that I’ve seen,” Maclin said. “It’s not just me playing myself, there’s a whole experience going on here. Most of my character is based on me and the things I’ve witnessed, not the things I’ve done. It’s not just me coming in here and being myself, it’s a whole craft being presented for you.”

Source: A24 / Sing Sing

While Maclin’s acting draws on experiences he had behind bars, Colman Domingo sought out help from one of his best friends in real life, Sean San José, to ground his performance.

“That was a beautiful part of this process, I think that we wanted to make sure that it felt honest in every way, from the people who have the lived experience, to those who didn’t have the lived experience, but had enough compassion and curiosity to understand, and for us to strike this balance,” Domingo told GlobalGrind. And for us to not know where one has lived experience one doesn’t. So I started to understand what I needed to go into this process, knowing that most of my castmates would have gone through the RTA program and I just thought it made sense to me with the Mike Mike character was like, ‘I need something as that anchor for me as well,’ and I knew that my friend Sean who was actually the artistic director of one of the most famed theater companies in the country, the Magic Theater, and he also has worked in prisons as well, doing this work like the RTA but in California. So I thought that he would be so great to work with this community of brothers who went through this program. Also, Sean is in my mind has always been sort of my North Star when it comes to actors. He’s an actors actor, and I knew that he would give not only himself as an actor but as a comrade to make sure we got it done.”

Domingo and San José ultimately ended up working and basically living together — not unlike like their characters in Sing Sing.

“He was going to stay at another hotel a couple miles away and we went to my hotel room and I actually had to pull out couch and we were just like, ‘Why don’t you stay here?'” Domingo explained. “So yeah we literally lived together and shot together at the same time. So whatever was happening off screen, we went in together every day, we left together. It was Heckle and Jeckle every time they saw us.”

Source: A24 / Sing Sing

That wasn’t the only incident of art imitating life. While Sing Sing wasn’t filmed at the prison it takes its name from, the production did take place in two real decommissioned prisons.

“I think it gave it authenticity,” Maclin told GlobalGrind. “It gave it a sense of truth, like ‘This is real,’ because we were really a real space. One of the prisons that we filmed in is considered a haunted prison. They do haunted tours there at twelve’o’clock at night and they say the ghosts of prisoners still walk there. It was authentic, to be there, to shoot there and for my brothers to experience it. For everyone that was involved that’s never ever been in a prison, or had a prison experience. They got to sit in this cell and I think that led to their empathy towards what we’ve been through and the message that we want to get.

“It lends itself to, I mean you have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and look at them,” Domingo said of the experience. “For me it was more about going back into these spaces and trying to find where people were trying to find light and true healing and rehabilitation. And in the construct it doesn’t. It’s more about punishment than rehabilitation, so for me it was really finding that and how did they find the life through that, so they can come back there.”

Source: A24 / Sing Sing

Dealing with such heavy subject matter would be taxing for anyone, but it’s easy to see why taking part in such a production would be particularly taxing to formerly incarcerated members of the cast. Both Domingo and Maclin revealed that a lot of work was done behind the scenes to protect the cast.

“The whole process was led by Greg Kwedar, the director and Clint Bentley our co-writer, and Monique Walton our producer,” Domingo revealed. “It really went to lay a foundation for us to feel safe on all parts to make sure that we’re being sensitive to the work and to people’s stories and their living experience, but also to the narrative feature that we’re creating, which is something we can just distill into 100 minutes, but it is about real people, and it’s about real people trying to make a difference, and it’s about how this arts program has true power and is making differences. Not only for the people who are taking part in it, but their families and also society outside. So I think that everything, the way we built it, every single way, even the equity model, to make sure that everyone’s stories were valued, their time was valued by sharing in equity. So that was important. The way we built it which is I think in a very modest model, to make sure that everyone felt they’re part of this community and they can give everything that they had to make sure that it lived up to their values and what was important to them. So I feel that everyone feels like their fingerprints are on this film and they feel like ‘Hey this is my film’ and have ownership.”

Maclin spoke directly to the healing process and how the RTA alum utilized techniques from their time with the program to help them throughout production.

“Another way that we we protected ourselves is that RTA we came up with a way to decompress after every production, because we recognized that people were getting depressed because when the show was over,” Maclin explained. “The high comes down and [people] crash. So we felt we had built in mechanisms to decompress and we also had a psychiatrist on set if we needed to go talk or we needed to find another way to decompress. We’ve been dealing with that for a long time, in prison, putting on plays and having people crash after them, so we found this way and we did it every day, we do it all the time. It’s just like coming together and just chopping it, that’s what we really doing, come together and discuss and should someone have something they need to discuss that’s heavy we discuss that, but more times than not it’s slight discussion that just softens the crash.”

Source: A24 / Sing Sing

Sing Sing is in theaters everywhere now.

Founded at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1996, RTA has provided arts-based workshops to thousands of incarcerated men and women, transforming lives and breaking the cycle of incarceration with proven results: less than 3% of RTA members return to prison, compared to 60% nationally.

SING SING is a testament to the life-changing impact of our programs. Join our movement to break the cycle of incarceration—every dollar brings us closer to offering hope, growth, and a path to a brighter future for those we serve.

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