Cole Doman Was Ready for His Big Break. Then Apple Pulled His Show

Actor Cole Doman is preparing to do something a bit out of character. “I’m about to go shoot a rom-com, actually,” he tells me over Zoom. The new film from director Gary Jaffe costars other queer actors like Tony nominee Robin de Jesús and The Sex Lives of College Girls star Michael Hsu Rosen, and is basically a “gay My Best Friend’s Wedding,” says Doman. “Everyone’s very pleased that I’m doing something sort of lighthearted, because I tend to shy away from that stuff.”

The boyish, impossibly blond Doman tends instead toward serious-minded indies, stealing scenes in dramas like Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Mutt and Zia Anger’s My First Film opposite Odessa Young. Next is Kelly Reichardt’s art heist film The Mastermind, where Doman shares the screen with Emmy winner Josh O’Connor.

The movie’s out Friday—a few weeks after another Doman project was supposed to premiere. But that Apple TV series, The Savant, is now in limbo. The show stars Doman and Jessica Chastain playing an undercover investigator who embeds herself in online hate groups. Apple decided to postpone the series’ release after right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed on September 10. Chastain spoke out in the immediate aftermath against Apple’s decision to pull their series, writing in a lengthy Instagram story that she was “not aligned” with the streamer’s decision. (Vanity Fair reached out to Apple TV for comment.)

“I agree with everything that she said,” Doman tells me now. “We are in a period as a society of dislocation and polarization. The thing that provides complexity is art. Art is the thing that can endure when our truth is being skewed and language is controlled and censored.” Like his costar, Doman doesn’t believe in taking The Savant off air entirely. “In censoring art and our show in particular in this moment, we are robbing people of seeing more complexity.” He takes a beat. “That’s the thing that is missing in our society. What censorship does is it seeks to erase that complexity.”

A South Philly native, Doman fell in love with acting after watching a particularly scintillating play on a trip to New York. “I went to see August: Osage [County] on Broadway,” says Doman. “Fourteen- or 15-year-old me was like, ‘Whatever they’re doing at Steppenwolf, I want to go there.’”

So he did. Doman eventually took classes with the famous Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where he studied under theatrical luminaries like Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tony winner Amy Morton. “My goal was always to work in the theater,” says Doman. “I was doing a lot of really interesting storefront experimental theater in Chicago.

But like so many actors, Doman’s path took an unpredictable turn. “As at one point an effeminate gay boy, I thought the only thing I could do was be a chorus boy on Broadway or do the repertory gay plays—the Terrence McNally,” he says, referencing the late great gay playwright. “I was content. That was my dream.” Things changed when he was cast as closeted Christian teen Henry Gamble in the 2015 independent film Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, written and directed by Stephen Cone.

“[Cone] really turned me on to international cinema and auteurism, Dogme 95,” says Doman, shouting out the Danish avant-garde filmmaking movement. “My world expanded. That led me to then try to ingest as much of our contemporary American auteurs as possible.”

Doman doubled down on indie films, appearing in shorts like Dominic Mercurio’s He Won’t Belong and Antonio Marziale’s Starfuckers, which earned raves at the Berlin Film Festival and Sundance. Supporting turns on television shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and the Gossip Girl reboot helped pay the bills; he lost a part on 13 Reasons Why to Tommy Dorfman, making a good friend in the process. (“I adore her,” says Doman.) He also learned a valuable lesson. “There were all these signals, like, ‘I’m going to get a big teen show and take off big,’” he says. But “when I look back, everything has happened exactly as I think it should. My dream was always to work with incredible writers and directors.”

One of them is Reichardt. “You can’t talk about our contemporary auteurs without talking about Kelly,” says Doman. “Wendy and Lucy was my intro. I was just destroyed—in awe of Michelle [Williams]’s performance, the filmmaking. I think First Cow is a masterpiece. I love Certain Women.”

So when he learned that Reichardt was casting a role in her new Boston-based period film, Doman leaped at the opportunity—even if he didn’t necessarily believe he was right for the project. “I saw it was like a 1970s art heist. I was like, Oh I don’t know if there’s going to be anything in that for me.” He sent in a tape anyway and got the job the next day.

Acting opposite Josh O’Connor wasn’t terribly intimidating, says Doman: “There isn’t this whole sort of process. He is just being Josh.” Working with the Oscar-winning Chastain was another thing entirely. “I worship Jessica,” he says. “She’s one of our most versatile actresses. She is fearless.” Throughout The Savant’s eight-month shoot, he says Chastain was “incredibly graceful and kind” but also “incredibly fierce.” Chastain, he says, “wants to get to the bottom of every moment and scene in the most economical way.”

Doman stars on the series as Steve Dunicki, a cadet in Indiana who’s been indoctrinated into a hate group. The actor tried to approach his character from a place of compassion: “He’s constantly being told he’s worthless,” says Doman. “When someone gives you any bit of authority or someone tells you, ‘This is the reason why your life went this way,’ it’s very easy to latch onto that as your mission statement.” Dunicki, Doman says, is trying to use that authority “to protect his family, which is ultimately the thing he cares the most about”—adding, “He’s not doing it the right way, obviously.”

Doman was able to draw on personal experience for the part too. He shares that most of his scenes are with Orange Is the New Black’s Pablo Schreiber as an “incredibly alpha male” who comes down hard on Dunicki. “Cole Doman, who grew up as an effeminate gay boy whose masculinity was constantly being questioned—it’s very easy for me to step into that, and feel like I’m not worthy or I’m not strong enough,” Doman says. “That made the shoot really challenging for me, personally.”

Incredibly enough, this is not the first time The Savant has been delayed. “I booked this job before the strike, so I’ve now been with the show for two and a half years,” says Doman. “I’m like, ‘This is the biggest job of my career so far. I’m ready to go,’ and then the plug gets pulled.” He’s optimistic that this most recent snag will also be temporary. “I really hope it does come out and see the light of day—not only for my work, but for everyone involved,” says Doman. “Jessica worked incredibly hard. We have a big talented cast and crew shot by the great Janusz Kamiński.”

Even as he tries to put his own feelings aside, Doman keeps coming back to the idea that avoiding difficult topics, like violence and extremism, is not what the country needs at this moment. “I don’t know the reasons for Apple pushing the show. I think we can infer what we want about the timing,” he says. “We worked hard, and I’ve been with this for two and a half years, and I was really excited for it to come out.”

Either way, Doman knows that the work is what counts most. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I think in certain indie circles, people know who I am. I am grateful to anyone who seeks out my ultra-low-budget movies,” says Doman. “This felt like a big stepping stone for me. As the days have gone by, all I can do is look forward and just continue to seek out work that’s interesting to me, and not worry about the result. This is another lesson in letting go of control. And that’s the biggest hurdle.”

While he’s let go of some things, Doman still has goals: He’d love to work with Christian Petzold, Olivier Assayas, Ira Sachs, and Andrew Haigh, among others. “I mean, Todd Haynes: Obviously every gay actor [wants to work with him].” I point out that it’s refreshing not to hear more obvious director names like Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan. Doman laughs.

“Listen, I think Casino, masterpiece. But I never saw myself in those worlds,” he says. Still, never say never. “Getting cast in The Savant, getting cast in The Mastermind in these very against-type roles—it’s given me confidence to say, ‘You know what? I actually can do anything.’”