Gay actor Colman Domingo recently opened up about the way his family embraced him after he came out to them in the 1990s.
In an interview with Men’s Health, Domingo spoke about his touching experience coming out to his older brother Derek, the first person he told. Derek had taken him to a strip club, and Domingo asked him to go outside and then admitted he was gay.
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“He looked at me and was just like, ‘What?’” Domingo said. “He just couldn’t believe it. Eventually, he said, ‘I don’t care, man. I love you anyway.’ And he just hugged me. Then he said, ‘Have you told anyone else?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Alright, this stays between you and me.”’
Domingo told his sister a couple of days later, and he said the only thing she was upset about was that she didn’t know first.
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Then came his mom, who said she’d keep it to herself but then quickly called his stepfather. Fortunately, his stepfather’s reaction was also one of love and acceptance. “She puts him on and he says, in his blue-collar masculine way, ‘You’re a good boy and there’s nothing you can tell me that would make me stop loving you,’” Domingo recalled.
During the conversation, Domingo also spoke about how he was not considered popular or athletic growing up.
“I’m a reformed introvert,” he said, recalling his childhood in Philadelphia as a shy and sensitive kid with a lisp.
Domingo has been married to his husband, Raúl Domingo, since 2014. In a 2024 episode of The Graham Norton Show, he shared that they found each other through Craigslist’s Missed Connections section after they spotted one another from afar at a Walgreens in 2005.
Also in 2024, Domingo, who was nominated for an Oscar that year for portraying civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the biopic Rustin, was named one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People of the year.
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