‘The Madness’ Bosses on Colman Domingo Thriller Hitting Home in Trump 2.0 Era — and That Ending
[This story contains major spoilers from the finale of The Madness.]
The description of Netflix’s eight-episode limited thriller series The Madness starring Colman Domingo reads: “Muncie Daniels is a political consultant-turned-TV pundit who may have lost his way in life. 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.”
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In the throes of the aftermath to a volatile election that is returning President-elect Donald Trump to office and is surrounded by disinformation, white supremacy and conspiracies, The Madness, set in Philadelphia in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania, probably hits a lot stronger than its official description, especially with its release over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The Madness creator Stephen Belber is a renowned playwright whose plays have been produced on Broadway and in over 25 countries. His numerous TV and film credits as a writer, producer and director include The Laramie Project starring Christina Ricci, O.G. starring Jeffrey Wright and Match starring Patrick Stewart, among others. His co-showrunner VJ Boyd also has an impressive résumé that includes Justified, S.W.A.T., Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for Bone Collector and Justified: City Primeval. Together, they clearly know drama.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Belber and Boyd below about their conspiracy thriller The Madness, delving into how and why the series was conceived, its relevancy, what Domingo brings, their Elon Musk-esque billionaire and unpacking that ending.
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Stephen, when did you conceive The Madness, because it couldn’t have been a few months ago.
STEPHEN BELBER Probably soon after Jan. 6. I was just looking around for something original to write, and I thought, “Oh, I’ll break the rule, and I’ll lean into the zeitgeist a little bit rather than try to avoid it,” which Netflix would have told me to do had I pitched it. And so it was sort of fun to say, “Oh, here’s a situation that starts out small and reverberates big.” And it’s adjacent to the feeling I’m feeling now, which is, “What the hell is going on?” I can’t quite get read on this country or on my neighbors sometimes, or on where we’re going, much less where we came from.
So, does that freak you out? Creating this work of fiction, leaning into real events and having it resonate right now. Like Netflix maybe should have put a trigger warning on this series.
BELBER Yes, it did freak me out, that it got any traction at all, even from my representatives to their credit. I think [that’s] because I was able to [attach] a thriller element [and] make it a bit of a thrill ride. It somehow blighted them to the fact that [the series is] about something also. And I don’t mean that cynically. But I was very glad because I do think Americans, as an audience, hunger for issue stuff like this [where we’re] talking about our complexities. If it’s done dramatically and if it’s done entertainingly, I don’t think it’s a taboo subject to talk about what screws us up as a country and what makes us great.
I was more so referring to how relevant it seems at this very moment.
BELBER I was talking about Hollywood. There I go. VJ said recently that the chaos of this country is [not] over, and the relevance of the themes that we started with a couple years ago are still there. And there’s a world in which people [have said], “Oh yeah, we got past it. We got past the divisiveness; Biden’s in office,” and of course not. So we would be foolish to think we can outrun it.
VJ, when did you come on as a part of this?
VJ BOYD A few months after Stephen sold the show, or the pilot, he and Netflix were looking for someone for Steve to partner with and that was late 2021 to run a room and hire writers, etc. I was one of the people Steve met with, and he and Netflix liked me, apparently. So then Steve and I started working together on it for a few weeks, and hired writers and started the room in February of 2022.
What attracted you to the series?
BOYD I thought the pilot Steve came up was really cool because it was an everyman on the run, but he wasn’t making the kinds of mistakes that we oftentimes see this fugitive-type character make on TV. And I saw an opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted to do, which was be part of a show where we see the protagonist make the right choices and make realistic choices, and still it just pulls him deeper into the conspiracy. Also, I was really interested in doing something about someone caught in a conspiracy who really, in the end, didn’t care about unraveling the conspiracy — or at least at the beginning — and for a lot of it, just wanted to get their life back.
The Madness can get frustrating because a lot of times Muncie seems to forget that he is a Black man and though some of his choices may seem logical for say a white man, they don’t always seem logical for Muncie.
BOYD And we want that. We want that to be a discussion. Listen, that was a discussion in the room when we hired writers, and there were some changes that Steve and I made to what Steve had already written based on the room’s input. One of our writers, in her interview said, “There’s a lot of different kinds of Black people.” We wanted to show that.
Originally, when Steve wrote it, Muncie’s wife wasn’t Black; he was in an interracial relationship. And that’s a lot. That’s part of, like, the melting pot of America, right? [But] we decided we wanted to have as many Black characters as possible in the show. Part of what I think we did in the show, and I think is really cool, is that this is a show anyone can watch and enjoy, and we are treating our Black characters, our primarily Black cast, like most shows treat white characters. They can just be people. They can be themselves because they’re not one of the two Black people in the show [and] have to represent all Black people. They can just be people. That’s not the theme of our show, but I think that it’s a thing that I really enjoyed about it.
So from the beginning, Muncie was a Black character?
BELBER Definitely. And I’m stealing VJ’s answer from another interview, but Muncie also does not have superpowers, in the sense of special skills. He’s not a special ops guy. He’s not a former Marine. His special skill that has gotten him where he’s gotten in life is that he can walk in any room and think he can talk his way through any situation. He’s got immense verbal skills and charm. And it goes with being a pundit on CNN. These guys are talkers, and they feel overconfident, perhaps, that they can find their way through anything, using their superpower of charm and talk. [In] that beginning scene where he should not be walking into that guy’s cabin at dusk, he thinks, “I’m famous. I’ve already been recognized as being on TV by this guy. I can do it.” And then later, his wife chastises him for that, but he is in a sort of semi-delusional place, one could argue.
Why was Muncie always a Black man?
BELBER I wanted to run [the character] up against this kind of white supremacy web, and I thought it would be more potent if he was a Black guy. And, again, that’s sort of leaning into the zeitgeist and I was obviously hesitant to take on a Black character. I almost saw this as more of a three-hammer [approach] between [Muncie] and the widow of the white supremacist guy Lucie [Tamsin Topolski] and Franco [John Ortiz] the FBI agent. I wanted the biggest conflict possible and a logical entrapment to be on the horizon. So, a Black man walks into the death of a white supremacist and they turn around and frame him. It just felt like deep drama.
Curiously, how did get CNN to say yes to Muncie Daniels actually being a CNN pundit, especially since there’s an undercurrent that’s an indictment of corporate news media in the series.
BELBER Great question. For some reason, they were easy. In fact, it was MSNBC in the original pilot but [CNN was] like, yes. [Netflix said] CNN doesn’t have an issue with using their logos. And I don’t know why that is [but] the last thing we wanted to do was create a fake [network].
BOYD I worried it was going to become some fake news media company. So I don’t remember the details of how we were able to do it [but] I’m just happy we were.
Now you’ve spoken about Muncie not having superpowers, but he’s very action-oriented from the very beginning, like he has some kind of survival skills.
BELBER We gave him Jiu Jitsu skills, [which a] middle-aged man can buy lessons [to learn]. And those skills do come in handy in the swamp. I rewrote [that scene] several times to make [his actions in the swamp] an act of desperation rather than a real deep skill. But yeah, we [also] wanted to make him a virile guy who is fighting middle age.
So once you found out that Colman Domingo would be your Muncie Daniels, what excited you? What did Colman bring?
BELBER I mean, I’m one of his longtime fans because I’m a theater guy here in New York. So is Coleman. He’s from West Philly, ironically or coincidentally. He said in the first interview we had with him: “I’m from West Philly, I drive a Range Rover and I teach, all the things that Muncie does as well.” I think we both really liked planting him deep in real middle age. The stakes for him were higher. It gave us a chance to give him more of a life lived, and the consequences of that life lived. And, in person, he’s just the most gracious, strong, best, top of the call sheet kind of guy you could hope for. He’s such a lovely presence.
BOYD And I would add that Colman has such a great presence. We knew we needed somebody who the audience wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off of, because this is someone who’s going to be in almost every scene in the show. He’s in every scene of the first four episodes. In watching Colman’s other projects, it’s like you’re always drawn to him when he’s on screen and he has a commanding presence. But to us, it also wasn’t like he was Schwarzenegger. He doesn’t necessarily look like he would be a Navy Seal kind of guy. We wanted him to have at least something of an everyman look to him so that people could see themselves in the character as well.
BELBER He also has this crazy ability to have an incredibly big smile and laugh and the voice, but also, he can tamp it down and focus that energy very laser-like. And even though we don’t get a lot of glimpses of him pre-murder, before stumbling upon that body, he’s able to give us, even in that short amount of time, the smile [that makes people say], “Oh, I know that guy. I like watching him on TV, and I’m going to take this journey with him,” which is going to require a different aspect of character that Colman is able to bring.
Can you talk about his estrangement with his wife, Elena (Marsha Stephanie Blake), and how that feeds into the tension of it all?
BOYD I’m trying to remember, Steve; I feel like that was already there. They were already separated when you originally wrote it, right? It’s interesting, because when Steve and I had been talking about where to go after the pilot that Steve had already written, we kind of kept pushing Elena [Marsha Stephanie Blake] and Demetrius [Thaddeus J. Mixson] aside and just [kept going], “Okay, where can they be that they’re safe so Muncie can have this adventure?” And, in the writers room, some of the writers pointed out that we were missing an opportunity to create greater conflict with the people who know him best. In my opinion, I know I was subconsciously avoiding the challenge of dealing with the family, just like Muncie himself was avoiding the challenge of making those relationships work by just separating and moving away.
BELBER We all realized that this inciting incident ironically triggers in him a need to recreate his lost community, i.e. his family, in this case. He’s a man whose ambition and desire for material success has distanced himself from his family and, when he’s in terrible need, you need those around you. You need your community that’s most tight, so he has to win them back in order for him to survive this crazy circumstances.
Plus, it illustrates how much he believes his own hype.
BOYD Yes, exactly. We said that repeatedly. Yes, this is a guy who believes his own press.
Talk about the relationship between Muncie and his daughter Kallie (Gabrielle Graham).
BELBER That was something that my wife [pushed] early on and was like, “You should give him more of a family than just a wife he’s kind of separated from and a son.” And it hit immediately as a very smart idea. We wanted to deepen his backstory and build it out without having to come with a lot of expositional talk about what my life was. So this notion that he started out as a more of a grassroots activist as a young man at a school and, along the way, he made choices that were solipsistic. And one of the collateral damages of those choices was his daughter, and, regardless of whether the relationship with her mom didn’t work out, she is something he has not had the emotional intelligence and capacity to really deal with yet in his life, until, again, this inciting incident compels him to reach out to her to say watch out. Until then, he has sacrificed her in many ways. He’s checked the boxes: He sent her the money, he’s saved her some money for college, and she used it in a grassroots way, in a way of living that he has left behind. So she represents a lot about who he is and who he was.
Throughout the eight episodes, Muncie doesn’t quite comprehend how bad his situation actually is.
BOYD Yes. He definitely keeps telling people, “Hey, I’m going to figure it out. I got a plan. I’m going to come up with something.” He doesn’t want to have to rely on anyone else. He doesn’t want to have to ask for favor. He’s someone who’s always been able to figure it out and always, up until this point, been able to convince himself he made the right choice, and that he was the good guy in the situation, right? He’s like, given the options, I did the best I could. Something that we never actually say in the show, but that we talked a lot about is what happened with Kallie [Gabrielle Graham] and her mom. And it’s like we imagine that her mom said to Muncie, “You know what, I’m fine. I don’t actually want you, to be a part of this. Like you can see her occasionally, but I’ve got it.” And she said that because she knew that’s the choice he wanted to make. And he was like, “Oh, well, this is what they want. I’m doing the right thing. She said that’s what they want. And see, I’m taking care of everything. And Isaiah [Stephen McKinley Henderson] is there.”
Let’s talk about the villain — the real villain. She’s so ruthless and so relentless. Was she in the original vision? How did you guys come up with her?
BOYD Julia Jayne [Alison Wright] and Don Sloss [Dru Viergever] were in Steve’s original ideas. Those characters have been there the whole time.
BELBER I think the reason that she stayed is that we just wanted someone who was slightly unexpected. Not that a female assassin is unexpected, per se, these days, but we wanted someone who was brainy, had an ethos, had a real, deep reason and belief system that came with her lethal abilities. And when we landed on the person she’s works for, we saw that almost as a partnership that she had with this guy. Clearly she’s the muscle, and she has her own muscle in Don Sloss [Dru Viergever], but we talked a lot about what actresses could do that. And I think when we stumbled upon Alison [Wright] playing Julia, and with her British accent, I just fell in love with her, and she just allowed us as writers to keep going and take it even further.
BOYD: She’s almost like a corporate assassin, in a way … We get to show that she’s a real person, like she has those phone calls with Rodney Kraintz [Neal Huff] and it’s not like, “Yes sir, we’re gonna do this, sir.” It’s not militaristic. It’s like a mentor, mentee relationship kind of a thing. It feels real. And I think that makes it feel scarier in a way.
Can you also talk about the Elon Musk kind of character in this billionaire Rodney Kraintz (Neal Huff), the Revitalize guy, more.
BELBER: I think we wanted to get a guy who was justifying actions that a lot of people can believe in. In this case, [it’s] sort of clean energy. We had all kinds of ideas, believe me, about what he represented in this regard. But the notion that billionaires in general are going to come with their own personal agendas, and they can be on the right side, on the side you agree with in terms of politics, or the side you don’t agree with but either way there is a corrosive component to what they do when they exert influence.
Be it Elon Musk now exerting major influence on our everyday lives and be very open about it, and being employed by the president [elect] or someone behind the scenes, behind the curtain doing it sort of covertly. It strikes us as real. We wanted this series to be always grounded. And so the idea [is of] a billionaire pulling strings in order to profit off good energy practices but also change the world. He’s probably a true believer in what he’s doing, but [there’s also the idea] that he could go from putting out misinformation, which is very realistic, to prodding the way an election falls with a little bit of legality was also not far-fetched.
And then the heartbreak of the FBI agent, Franco Quinones (John Ortiz), exposing that you could really be committed to an ideal and truly think that justice will really win, and it doesn’t.
BOYD: Yes, I think you said that really well. I think that Franco represents one of the many ways one can react to “the madness,” to this chaos and dividedness. And I think we created a lot of characters who are reacting in different ways to it and dealing with “the madness” in different ways. And Muncie has his way in the end, which is a more positive way than what Franco ends up in. But we debated a lot [about] whether it would work. And I think it is heartbreaking. And John Ortiz is amazing in that role.
BELBER: VJ was a very strong and smart advocate of making sure that Franco had a personal stake in [what he was doing and] wasn’t just idealistic about it. We are all once removed from being hit by this on a guttural level, and so for Franco’s character to be both feeling it ideologically and personally at the same time felt true to us, and felt like that would justify what happens [to him in the end].
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All eight episodes of The Madness are now streaming on Netflix. Read THR‘s interview with star Colman Domingo.
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