Colman Domingo was always on the receiving end of Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor's phone calls whenever they filmed those scenes for Disclosure Day.
In Steven Spielberg's latest sci-fi movie, the Euphoria star plays Hugo Wakefield, who is leading the charge to disclose classified information to the public about the existence of aliens.
For a large part of the film, Domingo is on his own in a mystery location, fielding calls from O'Connor's Daniel and Blunt's Margaret, who are both important to the cause.
Spielberg insisted that the actors perform those phone conversations together in real time, even if they weren't physically in the same place, so they could react to each other.
This meant that Domingo often phoned his co-stars from wherever he was in the world and acted out his lines so that they could film their side of the conversation on set.
"(Spielberg) made sure that we were available on a call with that person, wherever we were," Domingo explained to Entertainment Weekly. "So I was doing calls from L.A. or Europe. I would be on hold, and I would hear from the first assistant director on set, 'We're about to go again!' I would talk to Josh a little bit. We'd laugh and joke, and then we would do the scene. I'm actually acting with my scene partners each time and each take. And that's rare."
Elsewhere in the interview, Domingo shared that playing someone "professorial" and with "more of a quiet grace" marked a refreshing change of pace after playing intense characters recently.
To play Hugo, the mastermind of the disclosure operation, the Oscar-nominated actor based his performance partially on the Jaws filmmaker himself.
"I could just tell that there was something that Steven really understands about Hugo," he said. "I would listen to Steven and play Hugo based on some of my conversations with Steven and my understanding of Steven. He has a profound belief in people and humanity and what people can take."
Disclosure Day is now showing in cinemas.
