Why does Colman Domingo feel that The Madness is a vital watch? Details explored

Stephen Belber’s The Madness, starring Colman Domingo, premiered on Netflix on November 28, 2024, and was well received. The thriller centers around the character of Muncie Daniels (Domingo), a centrist media pundit, who gets tangled in the murder of a right-wing activist in the Pocono Mountains.

Colman himself mentioned that The Madness is kind of an essential watch during the present times because of the extreme media exposure that people are subjected to.

It is important to know what kind of information is to be trusted and which is to be avoided and The Madness focuses on these key aspects of media and how it has the capability of affecting people’s lives.

Let us now explore in detail what makes Colman think that The Madness is relevant right and how it compelled him to take up the project despite him wanting rest after he finished shooting for The Color Purple and Rustin.

Colman Domingo believes The Madness is extra relevant now

Given the kind of times that society is witnessing right now, with too much social media happening everywhere, leading to an overdose of information, a lot of which is often unverified and biased, Domingo believes it is more important than ever to have a show like The Madness now. As he mentioned, in an interview with Deadline,

"I think the show is asking you … don’t just take what’s given to you. But go a little deeper to actually look who’s behind curtain number three, four, five and six, and how it benefits them, the idea that you need to continue to believe what you believe and keep yourself separate from each other. And it keeps a chasm between us instead of you taking in all the information.”

Talking about his character Muncie in an interview with TheWrap, Colman said,

“That’s what I actually liked about Muncie. He does believe that you can sit at a table from opposite ends, have a conversation and build some bridges.”

He also said in the same interview that after the election in the US,

“Especially after the past few weeks, I think we’re all trying to lick our wounds and try to figure out who are we as a country? What do we believe in? Where’s our information coming from? How are we distilling it down?”

Moreover, since the lead character of The Madness is a Black American, that further elevates the show and includes themes of systematic and inherent racism in the society, As Domingo said himself about Muncie in an interview with Blavity's Shadow and Act,

“He’s got to rethink his life and think and his place in it as he’s being perceived as a criminal and an outlaw and eventually a vigilante. So I think that it’s doing a deeper dive examining this black man in America, stripping him away from all these things that sort of separated him from communities and sort of created his own bubble.”

Domingo also mentioned in an interview with TheWrap that since his character is a media pundit, the team behind The Madness watched interviews of people like Van Jones, Jonathan Capehart, and Don Lemon who are big names in the media industry, and from those, they analyzed:

“the ones when they were really spicy.”

Studying those media personalities and their on-air interviews helped Domingo to shape Muncie’s sense of self and how he deals with the sudden gush of things that start happening to him post witnessing the murder of the right-wing activist and gradually ending up as a suspect.

What is The Madness about?

The Madness follows Muncie, a CNN analyst, who gets wrongly accused of murdering a white supremacist.

While the character’s main motivation behind going to the woods in the Poconos mountains was to relax from the extremely busy life that he had, the murder also happens there only and his plans of taking a breather go for a toss.

As the show progresses he tries his best to prove his innocence while keeping himself hidden so as to not get caught or killed. Muncie is shown to be at his professional peak when this happens to him and that makes the whole fiasco even more devastating.

The Madness can be streamed on Netflix.