Now that the cat’s out of the bag … A few weeks ago, I had spoken to to Telluride boss Julie Huntsinger about George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin,” but in particular Colman Domingo’s work in the film.
Huntsinger couldn’t stop raving about Domingo’s performance, and now she’s saying it in print (via Variety): she believes he can win the Oscar for Best Actor and nobody else comes close — you hear that, Cillian Murphy?
She touts Colman Domingo’s transformative performance into gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in George C. Wolfe’s biopic “Rustin” as the one to beat in the best actor race this year. “I just thought there’s no way anybody will outshine him.”
It’ll be hard to beat Murphy. It’s such a tour-de-force performance and he’s practically in every scene of the 3-hour “Oppenheimer.”
Variety’s Clayton Davis took the Huntsinger intel and ran with it. Domingo is the current #1 in his Best Actor predictions, with Murphy at #2. It could very well be a race between these two consummate actors.
I say, one has to also watch out for Barry Keoghan (“Saltburn”), Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”) and Leonardo Dicaprio (“Killers of the Flower Moon”).
A trailer for “Rustin” was released two days ago. The film is a biopic of gay, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 March on Washington — the ingredients are most definitely there for primo Oscar bait. The screenplay was written by “Milk” screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black.
Colman has been acting in films for twenty years, but it’s only recently that he broke out of the herd and made a real name for himself. I’ll highlight his darkly comic turn in “Zola,” which had him playing a nameless pimp, whose unpredictable nature was terrifying to behold.
The film is coming to us via Netflix with a global streaming release of November 17th, 2023.