Yahoo News How Colman Domingo’s ‘You Are Here’ Is Flipping the Script on TV’s Travel Genre
Actor, producer and director Colman Domingo didn’t set out to expand inclusion in TV’s travel genre with his new AMC series You Are Here. But alongside other celeb hosts like John Leguizamo, Domingo is bringing a new spin to the format that broadens notions of how we come to understand a place.
“There is something kind of revolutionary about it — that I’m in these spaces,” the Fat Ham producer and Fear the Walking Dead star says of hosting a travel TV show as a queer Black man.
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Domingo’s identity — not just his race and sexuality, but his professional and personal trajectories— shapes every narrative choice on screen. That includes which cities he ventures to, and once there, which people he meets and which activities he engages in over the course of the four-part first season.
“I bring up my coming out story in the Philadelphia episode as I’m sitting with friends of mine. We’re just talking about how I’ve grown as a human being in different moments, so it comes up subtly,” he says. “I think, for my money, what I always love is that it’s not on the nose, but by loving me and my ideas, the way I travel and where I go, you can see I’m just like you. That there’s nothing different when you find out ‘he’s queer.’ I’m just leading with my curiosity. I’m leading with my passion for people. I think that’s what makes us seen as full human beings.”
During the four-part series, which debuted on June 19, Domingo goes to a séance in Savannah, where he has a deeply personal encounter. Later, in the New York episode, he visits the cast of Passing Strange, a dinner party that ultimately lasted three hours and “could be its own special episode.” Every stop is a tribute to gathering and celebrating in a new way — an experience the actor says he’s hoping to replicate differently in a possible season two.
A natural successor to his celebrity-filled series Bottomless Brunch at Colman’s, You Are Here offers an intimate, memoir-like journey through Philadelphia, Savannah, New York City and Chicago, as the Euphoria star revisits the people and locations — some obvious and direct, others less so — that were pivotal to his evolution. In the process, it asks viewers to acknowledge how they exist “here” through their own connection to that place, both historically and presently.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Domingo about how his approach to travel is more than a vacation pitch, how a personal tragedy shapes the way he moves with audiences, and how a second season might expand his vision for the AMC series.
As a travel series, You Are Here feels less about a look at what this place has to offer audiences and more about where and how you specifically fit into this place. What can this place tell you about your identity or your whole self — and then asks the audience to do the same.
The genesis of this show — the way I was going about it — I knew it was going to be unique. I feel like the way I tell story and find story is that we got to go a little deeper and pull back the curtain on ourselves a bit and share that with people, our journeys. How we got to where we are, why we’re curious about what we’re curious about, who are the people who stand in those spaces with you? I think sometimes it does take a moment — whether it’s a loss or growth — to count your steps backward in a way. I really thought about retracing steps, and hopefully you find some things that you may have lost along the way, in some way, like, “Hey! I used to do that thing. Why don’t I do that anymore?” Because we’re just getting older and changing and growing and are in new environments or our work dominates our spaces. I wanted to go back to that sense of discovery that I naturally have when I go on holiday. I go to places where I feel like I want it to change me a little bit. I want to be curious. I don’t really like to go with guides. I don’t really like to have things mapped out. I have an idea of what I like to see or do, and it’s about the journey. I think that’s where I find the most joy.
You go back home to Philadelphia, where you grew up, which feels like a different way of thinking about “travel.” But that emotional cycle of going somewhere, having it change you, and then coming back to the place you started is actually something that drives people’s desire to physically — and emotionally — travel. Can you talk about the decision to return home in this first season?
I think this will give people more of a perspective on who I am. Not only who I am, who you are. It’s about connecting communities. To be honest, I feel like the conceit for this first four-part season is, I’ll show you mine, and then I want you to show me yours. For the second season, I would like to take a guest, and we do that sense of exploration for an episode. We get to know [someone] in a unique way. We get to know another friend or colleague that I know, like Lee Daniels, and go somewhere that inspired him. This is how we get to know each other more and know the fullness of a person’s experience. Show me who you are. Show me your wounds. Show me your family, your beauty. Your people who know you best, who can “take the piss out of you” like my best friends, the people I grew up with since I was 14 years old when we’re sitting around eating cheese steaks and laughing and going roller skating.
Your Georgia episode captures what makes this show so different from other travel programming. You visit a former plantation in Savannah, but before that happens, you speak with a Black man who has roots there spanning back to the early 1800s. It’s a warm, enlightening, sensitive, communal conversation over a meal — less jarring than the pointedly “teachable” moments other shows offer. Why did you choose to go this route?
I think a lot of times that’s going for the audience purview, which is from an outside point of view, instead of it being a personally connected journey. I actually bristled at the thought of shooting in Georgia. I was shooting through The Walking Dead there, and [the show producers] said, “Well, do you have any roots in Georgia?” I said that my mother’s side of the family came from Georgia. But every time I’m in Georgia, I’m trying to leave Georgia, and I didn’t know why. I never enjoyed going. That’s the way I feel about the South. I just grew up with a lot of… whether it’s stigma about the South or knowing our history, so I stayed away from it. Of course, now Georgia is like Hollywood East, so I have to go there a lot for work. But I was always trying to get on the plane to get out of there. I had to do some soul-searching. I thought, well, maybe actually that’s the reason for me to explore Georgia because I have such complicated feelings about it. As I walked through Savannah every day and looked at how beautiful it was — the architecture is stunning, the people are genteel, friendly and warm; the food is good — there are many good feelings there.
But if you interrogate the history, all the squares — there’s so many squares. What happened in those squares? Oh, these squares were where they sold my people as chattel, and there’s no markers here. I feel the psychic trauma there, and I really wanted to deal with it. I really thought I need to know more about it and understand my feelings of trepidation, not only Georgia but the South. So I said, “Let’s do an episode here and find these markers for me to find some real discovery.” I was open to whatever. There are situations where we set up at a restaurant here that I enjoy, and I want to meet with this brother, because I want to find out more about the Black people who were born and raised here. These are my feelings, how do you feel having history here? That’s why we’ve had these sort of anchors.
Then, I walk the plantation because I was actually shooting on Wormsloe Plantation and when you drive in, it is called The Avenue. It’s something like 400 oak trees, and it’s absolutely stunning. But at the same time, all I could think of was: when I was on this plantation, at some point, I couldn’t tell which way from which. So I searched and interrogate that. It was by design. How long that avenue was. It’s a long road to prevent any enslaved person from trying to get free. I had to deal with all these complicated feelings. It’s so beautiful, but who built all of these gorgeous structures? Every tree has a story and all I can think about is my people hanging. I think of “Strange Fruit.” I think that’s part of the meat of the show. I’m going to take you somewhere that’s absolutely stunning, but you have to think about it now. That thing you have to carry — that trauma and that burden, which I think is what we’re so afraid of — we have to invite that in and say, that’s part of the story.
You touch on your mother’s death in the Philadelphia episode, and as someone who can relate and has similar relationships to travel, it feels like that moment in your life is guiding how you think about travel. Is that fair?
Absolutely. I lost my mother and my stepfather in 2006. My mother, was the center of my world and my family — I have two brothers and one sister. After mom was gone, I had to create new traditions, otherwise we’re just living in teh past. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas — because I didn’t want to feel that loss or feel, like, what do we do now — I traveled. I went somewhere else. I had different experiences. My Christmases, my holidays, look very different every year now. I went to Easter Island for Christmas last year, to go on a discovery and go somewhere that’s on a bucket list, way in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That’s Christmas for me. It’s about actually getting in touch with new people and inviting them in and having a different part of my spirit.
That’s why each episode — and I can’t wait for people to watch the other two — should feel different. Every city should feel different. Every part that has connected me to it feels different. So we’re not really following this format of, we go here, promote this thing, go see this. I’m not telling anyone what to do. Hopefully I leave you with the feeling that you’ve gained something, then you’ll attach it to your own experience and get out into the world to rediscover, to reignite. When we get to the Chicago episode, which is beautiful, I get to do some things like go back to the circus, where I have a lot of my roots. So that’s lovely because now I get to think “Oh, why did I stop doing that? Maybe I can add that now to my experience because I used to love it so much, and it made me feel free.”
You’ve got so much going on here, talking to a Fear the Walking Dead co-star in your final days of filming, going to séances and roller rinks, eating cheese steaks with old friends. How did you think about what to keep in order to shape each episode’s arc, and what might have ended up on the cutting room floor?
We shoot multiple segments a couple of hours a week and then a lot of B-roll walking around. While I’ve been shooting a full series in Toronto, I would get on a plane on Saturday morning and fly to whatever location. We shoot Saturday and Sunday, and then I’m back on a plane, usually Sunday afternoon. So we’re very strategic. I have a wonderful producing team, which includes my husband as well, and everyone helps organize. Doing documentary work, you just say hey, we’re meeting at this place. We’re going for a walk here. Here’s an event. We’re roller-skating here. Do we know what we want to happen? No, not really. We want to have organic conversation and have an event. So there’s a lot that ends up on the cutting room floor. You get the highlights of our moments. You can let things just be organic. With me as a host guiding it, I’m going to hopefully ignite some conversation whether it’s fun, weird or silly that we can use in some way. We lost a few interviews, [but] maybe a few of these will end up on social media or somewhere because they’re beautiful additions.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
The next two episodes of You Are Here air June 30 on AMC.
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