Source: Cindy Ord / Getty / Colman Domingo
The Academy Awards is working hard to repair its image by implementing sweeping diversity rules in 2021. Some significant history could be made if Colman Domingo and his husband Raul Domingo win on the biggest night in Hollywood.
Colman and Raul Domingo are poised to make history after being the first same-sex married couple ever to be nominated in any category after the animated short film New Moon earned a nomination. The couple serves as writers and producers on the film.
Per Variety, New Moon is described as “an imaginative journey,” that “tells the story of young Jay Jay and his mother Edie, as their inner-city dreams are illuminated by the new moon in their backyard of West Philadelphia.”
They will join a list of other couples going back to 1932 when Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt were nominated for Best Actor and Actress for their roles in The Guardsmen.
Recently, Penelope Cruz and her husband Javier Bardem earned nominations for their work in Parallel Mothers and Being the Ricardos.
Colman Domingo Reveals He Reached Out To Matthew A. Cherry For Help
Colman and Raul joined the Variety Awards Circuit podcast to talk about where the idea for New Moon came from and it being shortlisted for the Oscars.
“There’s many versions of it. Our friend Laurie Lathem talked about animation and talked about the solo play that I have of mine called A Boy and his Soul, and she said, “I think you should do animation with that,” Domingo begins. “This is also something Raul said many years ago, and he said, “we should do something else with A Boy and his Soul.”
He continues, “It’s a solo show I wrote in, like, 2006, and I performed all over the world, and I had no intentions of performing it again. But these two converging ideas about it think it lives in a different way. From that idea Laurie had, Raul laid out what it could be so that I could see it a bit more clearly.”
The couple decided to take a story from that play and use animation. They reached out to film director Matthew A. Cherry coming off the success of his animated short Hair Love, for some advice before settling on Jérémie Balais and Jeff Leffig to help bring their vision together.
You can listen to the full podcast episode by heading here.
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Photo: Cindy Ord / Getty
