Eighteen years before he would host Saturday Night Live, Colman Domingo belonged to the cast of a sketch comedy series that professed itself it be big and quite gay.
Ahead of the Emmy-winning and twice Oscar-nominated actor’s Studio 8H debut this Saturday night, let’s take a look back at Logo TV’s The Big Gay Sketch Show, which ran for three seasons and also counted SNL great Kate McKinnon among its ensemble.
Created by Rosie O’Donnell and directed by Married… With Children alum Amanda Bearse, The Big Gay Sketch Show debuted 19 years ago this month, airing Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. ET. The original ensemble included McKinnon, Julie Goldman (Tello’s Roomies), Stephen Guarino (Eastsiders), Jonny McGovern (host of YouTube’s Hey Qween!), Dion Flynn (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), Nicol Paone, Michael Serrato, and the late Erica Ash (MADtv).
McKinnon—at this point more than five years prior to her SNL debut—played such recurring characters as Fitzwilliam, an English, transgender teenager (watch a “making of” video), and Barbara Walters (in spoofs of The View).
Early reviews were… mixed. Variety said “this exercise would seem a whole lot bigger and gayer if it was just a bit funnier,” and only singled out Paone playing Elaine Stritch as a Wal-Mart greeter, and a Lesbian speed dating sketch. AfterEllen.com meanwhile opined that the show “mostly works,” though it “isn’t without its rough patches.”
With Season 2 of The Big Gay Sketch Show came a few cast changes. Ash, Flynn and Serrato were out, and to replace them the show tapped Domingo and Paolo Andino.
At the time, Domingo’s screen credits included a bit part in Clint Eastwood’s Freedomland, and one-off guest star roles across Nash Bridges and multiple Law & Order shows. On the stage, he was a part of the original, Off-Broadway cast of the rock musical Passing Strange, and he was the writer/solo star of the GLAAD Media Award-winning autobiographical show, A Boy and His Soul.
Reflecting on his BGSS audition process shortly after his February 2008 debut, Domingo said, “I did some pieces from the solo play that I’d written, and they seemed to like it and enjoy it!”
On The Big Gay Sketch Show, Domingo’s repertoire included Drag Race host RuPaul, The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg, America’s Next Top Model host Tyra Banks, music superstar Beyonce, Morgan Freeman, Nick Cannon, and the Oprah Winfrey. As he noted to Advocate.com ahead of Season 3, with Dion Flynn already gone and Erica Ash exiting, “Now I’ll be playing all the Black men and women.”
That included celebrated poet Maya Angelou, whom BGGS famously imagined as reading spicy Craigslist “Missed Connection” listings. AfterEllen.com called the recurring bit “sidesplitting.”
“Maya Angelou was actually the one character out of all the characters that I play that I didn’t pitch,” Domingo said in 2008, “but I thought it was very interesting because it’s funny to take this iconic, very intellectual and renowned woman and put words from Craigslist in her mouth. It gives you a bit of comic gold.”
That said, when it comes to Black characters the BGGS writing team was “very responsible,” Colman noted. “We spoof, but we also have a great respect for the characters that we portray.”
Colman Domingo as Maya Angelou? 😂 pic.twitter.com/BUrd04RI8D
— greg. (@mistergeezy) June 22, 2025
The third and final season of BGGS aired its finale in June 2010. Two years later, McKinnon was recruited by NBC’s SNL. During her scene-stealing, 11-season run, she amassed 11 Emmy nominations, grabbing gold twice.
At the time BGGS signed off, Colman was already part of the original Off-Broadway cast of The Scottsboro Boys, a musical based on the legal case of nine African-American teens accused of raping a white woman and a 17-year-old white girl in 1931. Upon the show’s move to Broadway, Colman in 2011 earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical.
In 2015, Colman joined AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, where he played Victor Strand for more than eight seasons. His TV credits have also included The Knick, Euphoria (Season 3 premieres Sunday on HBO), and the Tina Fey-starring Netflix rom-com The Four Seasons (Season 2 drops May 28).
On the big screen, his recent credits have included Rustin and Sing Sing (both of which netted him Academy Award, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations), and The Running Man.
All these years later, Domingo’s Big Gay past is not forgotten. During a January 2022 Jimmy Kimmel Live! visit, he told the ABC talker’s host that while he “never heard” from Maya Angelou prior to her passing, he knows for a fact that Oprah is aware of his send-up of the former daytime-TV queen.
“[Director] Lee [Daniels] called me up one day and was like, ‘I showed Oprah The Big Gay Sketch Show…,’ and I was mortified,” Domingo shared, explaining that in one “really weird, dark, crazy, sexually charged sketch” he as Oprah at one point is “wearing a ball gag.” Though Winfrey has never directly brought up with him what she now knows, “Every time I see her, I always feel like she looks at me like, ‘I know what you did,'” the actor told Kimmel.
Then in August 2024, with the real RuPaul guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Domingo revisited his take on the Drag Race creator and host, explaining, “We did everything a little over the top.”
Select episodes of The Big Gay Sketch Show are available for purchase on Prime Video.
Colman makes his SNL hosting debut this Saturday with Brazilian pop star Anitta as musical guest. The show is then set to go dark for two weeks before returning in May for its final three episodes of Season 51.
