“I think I’m getting framed for murder,” Colman Domingo uneasily observes at the beginning of The Madness trailer. That suspicion is pretty much immediately confirmed when a cop asks him, “We’re not gonna end up arresting you for this, are we?” They might try, but Domingo won’t go down without a fight when the new action thriller limited series premieres on Netflix on November 28.
The Madness follows Domingo as Muncie Daniels, “a political consultant-turned-TV pundit who may have lost his way in life,” according to the Netflix synopsis. “While on a work sabbatical in the Poconos to write the great American novel, Muncie finds himself the only witness to the murder of a well-known white supremacist, and now he’s being framed for the crime. Muncie is forced to go on the run in a desperate fight to clear his name and unravel a global conspiracy before time runs out. Along the way he’ll reconnect with his family, find unlikely allies, and fight against disinformation in a post-truth age.”
The Madness trailer makes clear that this isn’t your standard frame job thriller; there’s a specific racial element that makes the situation all the more dangerous for Muncie. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m Black, I’m on TV, I was there,” he says. “I’m walking around with a bullseye on my back.” The crisis transforms him from an inoffensive TV centrist to a gun-toting action hero who “strives to reconnect with his estranged family—and his lost ideals—in order to survive.” In a conversation with Netflix’s Tudum, Domingo says Muncie is modeled after real-life pundits “who are respected, at times challenged, even by their own communities. Sometimes looked at as being not Black enough, and then to some folks, too Black. He is someone who was definitely an activist when he was younger, then moved into a different echelon and then became a bit of a superstar. He’s a little bit removed from the communities he was advocating for.”
In the last few years, Domingo has fashioned himself into a leading man, earning an Oscar nomination for his role in Rustin and critical acclaim for his recent turn in Sing Sing. With its Bourne-esque action thriller elements, The Madness makes him a different kind of leading man, but based on the trailer he seems well equipped for the task. The eight-episode series also stars Marsha Stephanie Blake, John Ortiz, Gabrielle Graham, Tamsin Topolski, Thaddeus J. Mixson, Deon Cole, and Bradley Whitford.
English (US) ·