Glover’s stardom ready for take-off
Star of cable comedy Atlanta, as well as Star Wars prequel also has a Grammy Award
LOS ANGELES— Call him Childish Gambino. Call him Lando Calrissian. Call him Earnest Marks. Whatever you call Donald Glover, that name will be associated with the massive amount of success the actor/musician/producer is having.
Glover can be seen in the second season opener of his FX series Atlanta on Thursday at 10 p.m.
The cable comedy about two cousins trying to find success in the Atlanta music scene as a means to a better life has already earned Glover a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy or Musical plus prime-time Emmys for acting and directing award. The Television Critics Association gave Atlanta three awards, including an individual honour for Glover.
Atlanta was the most award-winning and decorated comedy series in a first season in the history of FX and had the highest-rated season of any comedy in FX history, with an average of 5.3 million total viewers.
Glover didn’t look back at what happened in the first season but put his focus on making the second season as good on its own merits. He’s gone so far as to call the second season “Atlanta Robbin’ Season.” He turned to a unique source for inspiration.
“We definitely went into this season trying to figure out what we liked about the first season. We just looked at it as 30 minutes on television. We weren’t trying to think about it in terms of sitcoms or, like, tropes or what had come before,” Glover says. “We didn’t really look back at Season 1 for inspiration. I feel like if you do that as a producer of television or any sort of art form, you tend to be risk averse, which I really think is bad for art. We really just tried to beat ourselves.
“We just went into this being, like, ‘Why are we going to do Season 2? Everybody does Season 2.’ And I felt like the theme that we really wanted to go for was this. And I think, in the writers’ room, we talked a lot about How I Spent My Summer Vacation by the Tiny Toons.”
The influence of Tiny Toons came from how all of the episodes of the How I Spent My Summer Vacation could be viewed and enjoyed individually. But if watched together, there is a connective thread.
This was going on while he was slipping into the role of the coolest man to ever fly through the galaxy, Lando Calrissian, for the Star Wars prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story. He’s stepping into one of the most iconic roles in science fiction in one of the biggest franchises, but Glover never felt any extra pressure.
The Star Warsmovie was the first in a long time for Glover where all he had to do was act.
Along with the TV and film jobs, Glover has also found success in the music world under the name Child- ish Gambino. He picked up a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Redbone.”
The 11 episodes in the second season of Atlanta will again rely heavily on music.
“The music of the show is such a different part of it. It’s kind of the mouthpiece for Atlanta, the actual city, the way we use the music in the show,” Glover says.
To tell the story of Atlanta on Atlanta, Glover and the rest of the executive producers have been very supportive of the rap community. Their music helps Glover look at the bigger social, political and financial elements that define the people.
“We always talk about grey areas. Everything’s so fire and ice, and most of the world most of the time is in the middle and most people are in the middle,” Glover says. “Specifically with being Black and making money, you start to realize how much of that is tied to being poor, and how much of that identity is part of the things you can’t have and the things people won’t let you have, and you don’t know where the lines are anymore.
“It’s hard to be yourself because that definition is changed by what people are allowing you to do and what people are allowing you to say, and who you are allowed to hang out with and stuff.”