Colman Domingo Says He Was the ‘Nerd’ to Will Smith’s ‘Cool Kid’ in High School

Colman Domingo has played presidents’ advisors, prison theatre directors, recovering addicts, and some of the sharpest-dressed men on any red carpet. But ask him about high school, and he doesn’t reach for any of that. He reaches for a much simpler, much more familiar label: the nerd.

Appearing on the Friends Keep Secrets podcast, hosted by Benny Blanco, Lil Dicky, and Kristin Batalucco, the 56-year-old Oscar nominee opened up about growing up in West Philadelphia — and about sharing a school with a kid who would go on to become one of the most famous people on the planet.

“West Philly, born and raised,” Domingo said, borrowing the line that Will Smith made famous, before adding the part most people didn’t know: “I went to high school with Will… We had gym class and science class together.”

That school was Overbrook High School in Philadelphia. Smith was one year ahead of Domingo. And in Domingo’s telling, the gap between them back then felt a lot bigger than a single school year.

The cool kid and the nerd

Domingo didn’t dance around it. He said flatly that he “wasn’t cool” in high school. Smith, on the other hand, was — to put it mildly — the opposite.

“He was the cool kid and I was the nerd,” Domingo said. “We were never friends.”

It’s the kind of line that lands because it’s so unguarded. Plenty of famous people rewrite their teenage years in hindsight, smoothing out the awkward bits until they sound like they were always destined for the spotlight. Domingo does the reverse. He happily hands himself the least glamorous role in the story and gives Smith the crown.

And not just any crown. Domingo said Smith “really was the most popular kid in high school.” This wasn’t a case of a future star quietly blending in until fame found him later. Even as a teenager, Smith already had a stage presence, a following, and a sound that other kids wanted to be near.

At the time, Smith was already making music as a local rapper with DJ Jazzy Jeff. Domingo remembered it clearly: “a local rapper with Jazzy Jeff, and all the cool kids went to see them.” If you wanted to know where the energy in the school was, you followed the crowd to Smith’s shows.

So no, Domingo and Smith weren’t trading notes in the hallway or hanging out after class. They shared gym and science, and that was about it. Two kids in the same building, on completely different tracks — at least as far as high school popularity goes.

Two very different roads out of Overbrook

What makes the story stick is how both of them ended up in the same business anyway, just by routes that couldn’t look more different.

Smith’s rise was fast and loud. As one half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, he broke through in the late 1980s with a playful, radio-friendly style that stood out in hip-hop at the time. “Parents Just Don’t Understand” won the first Grammy ever awarded for rap, and by 1990 Smith was starring in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a sitcom built, quite literally, around his own move from West Philadelphia to a much fancier zip code.

From there, the film career took off in a way few television stars ever manage: Independence Day, Men in Black, Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness, and eventually an Academy Award for King Richard, in which he played Richard Williams, the father and coach of Venus and Serena Williams. Smith became, for a long stretch, the closest thing Hollywood had to a guaranteed box-office bet.

Domingo’s path was slower, steadier, and built mostly on stages before it ever reached screens. Born in Philadelphia in 1969, he spent years working in theatre, writing, directing, and taking the kind of character roles that don’t make magazine covers but do make other actors pay attention. If Smith was the kid everyone already knew in high school, Domingo was the one putting in the hours where fewer people were watching.

That patience paid off in a big way over the past decade. Television audiences got to know him as Victor Strand on Fear the Walking Dead, a role he played across multiple seasons, and as Ali on HBO’s Euphoria, the sponsor and mentor figure whose quiet, honest scenes with Zendaya’s Rue became some of the show’s most talked-about moments.

Film followed. He was part of the ensemble of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, played a memorable turn in Zola, and then stepped into the centre of the frame as civil rights organiser Bayard Rustin in Rustin, a performance that earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He followed it with another Best Actor nomination for Sing Sing, playing a man who finds purpose and dignity through a prison theatre programme. Two nominations in a row, for two very different men, is the kind of run most actors spend a whole career chasing.

Put side by side, the two careers almost read like a lesson in timing. One guy was famous before he could legally drink. The other spent decades getting ready for the moment when the spotlight finally swung his way. Neither route is better. But Domingo’s version is a useful reminder that being the nerd in high school doesn’t close any doors — sometimes it just means you take the stairs while everyone else crowds into the lift.

The strangest part: they’ve barely crossed paths since

Here’s the twist Domingo shared that fans probably didn’t expect. For two men who grew up in the same part of Philadelphia, went to the same high school, and ended up in the same industry, they have almost never actually run into each other as adults.

“The weirdest thing is throughout our careers now, I’ve never run into him,” Domingo said.

Think about that for a second. Hollywood is a small town dressed up as a big city. Award shows, premieres, charity galas, studio lots — the same faces keep turning up in the same rooms. And yet, somehow, the two Overbrook alumni kept missing each other.

There was one exception, and it’s a good one. Domingo said the one time they did see each other was back when he was working as a waiter at a restaurant in Philadelphia. He didn’t dress it up or turn it into a grand anecdote. It was just life: one guy serving tables while he built his career, the other already on his way to becoming Will Smith.

There’s something quietly satisfying about that detail. A lot of actors’ origin stories skip straight from “struggling artist” to “breakout star” with nothing in between. Domingo’s includes the restaurant shift. It includes gym class with the most popular kid in school. It includes years of not being cool, and not pretending otherwise.

That honesty is part of why Domingo connects with audiences now. His performances tend to carry the same quality: no showing off, no rush to be liked, just a person standing in front of you, fully present. You can hear that same quality in the way he tells this story. He’s not bitter about high school, and he’s not trying to claim a friendship that wasn’t there. He’s just telling it straight.

What happens when they finally do meet properly

Domingo sounded relaxed about the whole thing, and hopeful rather than wistful. “I’m sure we’ll see each other at some point,” he said. “And there’ll be warmth and a shared history from Philadelphia.”

It’s easy to picture that meeting. Two men in their fifties, both with long careers behind them, finally having the conversation they never had as teenagers. One of them was the cool kid. The other was the nerd. Now they’re just two Philly guys who made it, comparing notes on a city and a school that shaped them both.

There’s also a small, funny symmetry to it. Smith’s most famous character spent six seasons joking about being the new kid from West Philadelphia who didn’t quite fit in Bel-Air. Domingo, meanwhile, has built a career playing men who don’t quite fit in anywhere at first — and then refuse to shrink themselves to fit anyway. Different characters, same stubborn refusal to disappear.

Fans loved the story for a simple reason: it’s relatable in a way most celebrity anecdotes aren’t. Almost everyone remembers a version of this from their own school days — the cool kid, the nerd, the invisible line between their tables in the cafeteria. Most of us never get to find out what happened to both people thirty years later. In this case, both of them became famous, both of them did it on their own terms, and the nerd of the story turned out to be an Oscar-nominated actor with one of the most respected resumes in the business.

Not bad for a kid who just sat through gym and science with Will Smith and went on his way.

And if that reunion does happen — at an awards show, a premiere, or just back in Philadelphia — it will be worth a photo. Not because it’s a celebrity meeting, but because it’s the closing scene of a very long, very Philly story: the cool kid and the nerd, finally in the same room, as equals.

Source: Just Jared