It was a chilly Saturday night in New York City, and the spring air was filled with electricity. It was the witching hour: The moment when you can decide to either go home to Netflix and chill, or hit the streets and get the party started. On this particular evening, actor/writer/director/producer Colman Domingo, 53, chose the latter.

As a producer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning and five-time Tony Award-nominated play Fat Ham (inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet), Domingo decided to celebrate the play’s Broadway debut with a “Juicy Disco” (so named for Juicy, the Black queer main character of the dramedy). The party was filled with references from the hit play, including a backyard barbecue complete with picnic tables and green Astroturf, a massive light-up dance floor, and juice-box-inspired raspberry cocktails. It was the perfect recipe for mischief, mayhem, and magic.

“For me, that dance party was very special,” Domingo recalls. “It’s still one of the best nights out I’ve had in a long time. And I felt like we all needed that. I invited people from the literary world, the art world, the fashion world, and the theater world, because as we know, as artists, it’s all a hybrid.”

EBONY Evolution explores the past, present and future of our favorite stars. In an in-depth interview, we get an intimate look into the life, love, and career of Black trailblazers through their own voice and perspective. This month, June cover star Colman Domingo discusses his Tony-award-nominated play, Fat Ham, and how his forthcoming portrayal of acclaimed civil rights activist Bayard Rustin has been his most personal and transformative portrayal yet in this latest episode.

John Boyega has never presented as someone who lacks in confidence. From the moment the London-born actor of Nigerian-descent burst into public prominence — as the steely young lead in the subversive sci-fi adventure Attack the Block — his trademark has been a kind of palpable, radiating glow of self-belief. He was the preternaturally magnetic performer holding his own opposite screen veterans with 10 times his experience; the luminous human charm-bomb who was as comfortable swinging a toy lightsaber on a chat show as he was addressing a rapturous crowd at a Black Lives Matter protest.

Even so, things have sharpened and shifted recently. A professionally and personally transformative three years — a period that has seen him play a precolonial West African ruler in The Woman King, embody a PTSD-afflicted war veteran in Breaking, and win a Golden Globe for his turn as a trailblazing Black British policeman in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology — have given new texture and definition to his faith in his own abilities.

EBONY Evolution explores the past, present and future of our favorite stars. In an in-depth interview, we get an intimate look into the life, love, and career of Black trailblazers through their own voice and perspective. This month, June cover star John Boyega discusses his Nigerian roots, starring opposite Jamie Foxx in Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone and his journey of transformation in this latest episode of EBONY Evolution.

Shameik Moore just turned 28 in May, but he’s more than a decade and a half into his career as a performer. Inspired by the film You Got Served, he started out as a dance-battle sensation in Atlanta, which landed him in music videos, followed by a series of increasingly prominent acting roles, in films and television series from Dope to The Get Down to Wu-Tang: An American Saga. “I want to deliver every time,” Moore says on a call from London, where he’s promoting his latest work, the second SV film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, in which he voices Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino successor to Peter Parker. In the eye-popping CG-animated film, we find his character interacting with other Spider-People across the multiverse and discovering what it takes to be a real hero.

But Moore has never wanted to be defined by a singular medium. He recorded several tracks for the film Dope alongside Pharrell Williams, and more. The son of Errol Moore, a reggae musician, Moore has been in the studio recording hundreds of tracks, as well as directing music videos, which he hopes to start rolling out sometime this year.

EBONY Evolution explores the past, present and future of our favorite stars. In an in-depth interview, we get an intimate look into the life, love, and career of Black trailblazers through their own voice and perspective. This month, our June cover star and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse actor Shameik Moore discusses his roots and journey of personal growth in this latest episode of EBONY Evolution.