The Emmy winner returned to Temple 35 years later with a doctorate and a story worth hearing
Colman Domingo had prepared remarks. He set them aside almost immediately.
The Emmy-winning actor took the stage Wednesday morning at Temple University’s 139th commencement ceremony before thousands of graduates packed into the Liacouras Center, and within minutes he had traded his notes for something looser and more personal. He is a storyteller, he told the crowd, and storytellers go off book.
It was a fitting entrance for a man who has spent decades making unexpected choices pay off.
How Temple shaped Domingo
Domingo first walked onto Temple’s North Philadelphia campus in 1987, a kid from West Philadelphia with journalism ambitions and a full social calendar. He juggled multiple jobs alongside his coursework, including a stint in the travel and self-help section at a Barnes & Noble on Walnut Street, a post he described as oddly appropriate given where his head was at the time.
His appetite for campus life was, by his own admission, considerable. He told the crowd he had attended more parties at Temple than most people manage in a lifetime, knew his way around a keg and moved freely between the Black and white fraternities on campus. He credited that social life, warmly and without apology, with contributing to his eventual departure.
In 1991, with roughly 50 credits left toward his degree, Domingo left at 20 years old. Drama professor Chris Wolfe had encouraged him to pursue acting more seriously. He took that encouragement and moved with three friends into a small studio apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
He described the decision the way only someone who has lived through it can. When you are 20, he said, that sounds like a great idea.
Domingo builds a career from the ground up
San Francisco gave Domingo his foundation. He performed at the New Conservatory Theatre Center and Theatre Rhinoceros, worked as an aerial web artist, stilt performer, juggler and clown for local circus companies and gradually built a reputation as a serious stage presence. He went on to earn Tony and Obie nominations as both a playwright and performer, becoming a working theater veteran long before Hollywood came calling.
His screen career followed in measured steps. The Oscar-nominated films Sing Sing and Rustin brought him widespread recognition, and his current film Michael is now in theaters. None of it, he told the graduating class, would have been possible without the years he spent at Temple, even the ones he spent not going to class.
What Temple Made actually means
The phrase Temple Made runs through the university’s identity, and Domingo spent a portion of his 30-minute speech unpacking what it means to him. He referenced Maya Angelou and James Baldwin, drew from his own biography and offered the graduates something closer to a reflection than a pep talk.
Temple, he said, is not for people looking for an easy path. It is for those willing to wake up before sunrise, hold down two jobs and still show up to class. It is for people who believe that education is not just a ladder toward something better but a source of light in itself.
He told the graduates to go out into the world as their whole selves. Their Philly selves. Complicated, brilliant and unstoppable.
The ceremony also honored the late JoAnne Epps, Temple’s 13th president and a distinguished legal scholar. Domingo received an honorary doctorate of humane letters, the degree he never finished 35 years ago now formally his.
Temple’s class of 2026 includes more than 8,100 graduates from 49 states and over 100 countries.