Philly’s Colman Domingo to direct and star in Nat King Cole biopic

West Philly’s Colman Domingo continues to make his mark in cinema.

Variety has reported the Temple University graduate will make his directorial debut and star in an upcoming biopic based on the life of the chart-topping jazz crooner Nat King Cole, who made history as the first Black person to have a variety show on national television.

It’s unclear what part of Cole’s life the biopic will focus on, but the African American struggle for civil rights will likely center the narrative. Cole, who was born in 1919 in Montgomery, Ala., and grew up in Chicago, reached the height of his entertainment career during the Jim Crow era. As one of the first Black artists to achieve crossover appeal, he often performed in front of segregated audiences, including a 1944 performance for Black soldiers at the South Street branch of the United Service Organization. A photo of Cole is on display at Rex at the Royal as part of “Legacy Reclaimed: A 7th Ward Tribute.”

In 1957, Cole was attacked and beaten by white audience members while performing on an Alabama stage. Attackers told him to go home because he was a Black man. Cole was a member of the NAACP and participated in the 1963 March on Washington.

Domingo earned the Academy Award nomination for best actor for his role as Bayard Rustin, the queer civil rights leader who organized the March on Washington in the Netflix biopic Rustin. The Philly native told Variety that he’d been working on the Cole project for a few years: “It’s something I’m looking forward to putting together with some great partners.”

There have been several documentaries on Cole’s life, most notably 1988′s The Unforgettable Nat King Cole, starring Harry Belafonte with appearances by Cole’s daughter, the late Natalie Cole. But Coleman’s yet-to-be-named project will be the first feature-length narrative film about Cole’s life.

Domingo cowrote Lights Out: Nat King Cole, a play about Cole’s life that imagines what may have been going through his mind as he filmed The Nat King Cole Show’s Christmas special in 1957. The play was performed at the People’s Light Theatre in Malvern in 2017.

Cole recorded the first version of the Mel Tormé holiday classic, “The Christmas Song,” first with the Nat King Cole trio in 1946, and again as a solo artist in 1953 and 1961. It’s one of the most popular holiday songs ever recorded.

In addition to embarking on his directorial debut, Domingo was recently cast as Joe Jackson — the entrepreneurial, borderline abusive father of legendary pop-sensation Michael Jackson — in Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic.