The hyper-talented actor, writer, musician, and comedian Donald Glover
has dominated pretty much every form of entertainment out there. But who is he really,
and what's the story behind the icon? This is the untold truth of Donald Glover.
Donald Glover was born in 1983 on Edwards Air Force Base, in the desert outside of Los
Angeles. He and his parents soon relocated to Stone Mountain, Georgia, where Glover spent his
childhood. In an interview for Esquire, Glover talked about his difficult upbringing, saying:
"Confederate flags everywhere. I had friends who were white,
whose parents were very sweet to me but were also like,
‘Don’t ever date him.’ I saw that what was being offered on Sesame Street didn’t exist."
Glover lived with his mother, father, sister, brother,
two adopted siblings and a rotating cast of foster kids. He recently told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I saw kids dying of AIDS in our house.
I saw people getting stabbed. I saw drug dealers stealing people's address books
so they could get to my house because people [there] owed them money."
But even among all these difficulties,
the young boy dreamed of a brighter future, and even wrote himself a letter at age 11 that said:
"I'm gonna try and I'm gonna save the world."
same forms of entertainment as his peers. But one exception for the young boy was Star Wars.
Glover's father took him out of school to go see the prequels when he was a teenager, and
he later recalled to Esquire how much he adored his Lando Calrissian action figure as a young boy.
Many years later, after Glover had become a successful entertainer,
he heard about an impending new Star Wars project. According to rumors,
the project would feature a younger version of Lando — so Glover jumped on the opportunity.
"I told my agent, I was like, 'if they're making
a Han Solo movie, Lando's gotta be in it. And I wanna be Lando.'"
Today, the actor credits his securing of the role in 2018's Solo to his passion for the character
and the saga as a whole. Regarding Glover, the movie's director, Ron Howard, told Esquire:
"I loved his take on Lando and his passion for the character. It’s charm,
it’s humor, it’s an intelligence, there’s a roguishness he understands without selling
out the character’s traits. You’d be a fool not to engage him creatively.”
While attending New York University, Donald Glover decided to join a school sketch comedy
group called Hammerkatz. There, he met D.C. Pierson, Dominic Dierkes, Dan Eckman,
and Meggie McFadden. The five members broke off on their own and started to create comedy together:
Eckman took over directing, McFadden produced,
and the remaining three were the star actors. Together, they were Derrick Comedy.
They recorded a number of comedy sketches
and uploaded them in the early days of YouTube. McFadden later explained to Mel
Magazine that the team worked because of their close personal relationship, saying:
"We literally hung out all the time. When we weren't making sketches,
we were playing Street Fighter or Mario Kart. I have nostalgia for the way we were
creating those sketches. Us just hanging out at 3 a.m. and having a weird idea."
The YouTube videos were a hit and the crew went on to self-promote and create the indie film Mystery
Team. The movie premiered at 2009's Sundance Festival, and netted about $90,000 in total.
As a kid, Donald Glover's idea of comedic television came from The Muppet Show.
He joked to Rolling Stone in 2011 that his mom permitted him to watch the show despite it being,
in her opinion, "made by hippies on drugs." But she wouldn't let him watch The Simpsons at all,
despite the fact that it was written by literal Harvard graduates.
Still, that didn't stop Glover from being named by his classmates as "Most Likely to Write for
The Simpsons." Unfortunately, he didn't end up writing for the legendary animated series,
but his Derrick Comedy work did gain the attention of famous comedian Tina Fey, and
the Saturday Night Live star brought Glover onto the staff of her show 30 Rock when he was still a
relatively green writer. Of his time as a member of the team, Glover told Entertainment Weekly:
"Tina [Fey] taught me how to write, but also about the politics of television."
Even with his big break, Glover couldn't help but notice he stuck out in the writer's room.
As Glover recalled to The New Yorker:
"I wondered, Am I being hired just because I'm Black?"
Fey admitted to the outlet that Glover's instincts were partly true, saying that,
although she admired Glover's talent, she had originally hired him because funds from NBC's
Diversity Initiative meant he could join the writer's room at no cost to the show.
Eventually, Donald Glover left his coveted spot as a writer on 30 Rock
and moved to Los Angeles to give acting a try. He soon auditioned for — and then
landed — a starring role on Community as the ex-high school hotshot Troy Barnes.
Troy was originally supposed to be paired up with Chevy Chase's character, Pierce,
but Glover soon struck out by himself and quickly
became one of the show's most popular and lovable characters. Before long,
Community had become a cult hit, thanks in no small part to Glover's knack for comic acting.
"Good news guys, I spent all my money!"
"Troy, you can't bring that in here!"
"Yes I can, it's all-terrain, dummy."
Sadly, Glover exited the show a season before it ended,
but is nonetheless grateful for his time on set. He told the Daily Beast:
"Community is always going to be a big part of my heart. It’s strange to me because when
we were making it, it felt like we were dancing in our living room with friends
and no one was watching [...] I didn’t know it was a thing when we were making it,
it just felt like a fun time hanging with friends."
After his work on Community, Donald Glover was well-known throughout Hollywood,
mainly for his comedic acting. But he had other big plans — namely, to create his own show.
Glover started to pitch the idea around, but its dark, existential themes caught many producers
and execs off guard. Eventually, however, FX acquired the series, and Atlanta was born.
"Bite this sandwich."
"...Nah, I'm good,
man."
Glover hired an entirely Black writing staff for the series,
many of whom had never worked in television before. He continued to shake things up from
industry norms by using his personal home as the main office for the series
and hiring relatively unknown actors and directors. As The Hollywood Reporter put it:
"Glover's goal was less to prove that his way was
better than it was to prove that there was another way."
Glover later told Esquire that producing the show on his terms was vital,
even if that scared away multiple networks. He explained:
"I just focused on making it more and more personal."
But the gamble paid off. Critics praised the series and Glover was a big winner at
the 2017 Emmys: taking home one statue for his work as a director and another
for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
Not only does Donald Glover get to write and star on his own successful TV series,
but he also gets to work alongside his own sibling on the show, too. Glover brought on his brother,
Stephen, to help write for the series, and it's far from just a ceremonious role. In fact,
Stephen is the only credited writer on four of 10 episodes in the first season of the show,
meaning that both Stephen and Donald were both nominated for the same Emmy award for writing.
The brothers' success with Atlanta also led to the opportunity for both men to
work on a now-cancelled Deadpool series with one another. Donald later told The Hollywood Reporter:
"[Our lawyer] was like, 'No one does that. No one goes from staff writer to creator in a year."
Describing their childhood to the outlet, Stephen remembered that he and his brother would listen
to bootleg audio of Simpsons episodes together, with their primary source of amusement being their
own imagination. The two young boys even created their own fake TV shows and commercials, as well
as fake movie trailers on which Donald would do all of the sound effects. And as for today?
Well, as Donald confessed, while his brother is quicker to laugh:
"I'm definitely more intense."
The future award-winning rapper's "first taste of rap" was Fred Durst,
the white rock-rapper who was a star as the frontman of Limp Bizkit in the late
'90s and early aughts. Glover later told The Village Voice:
"They say there's no place in hip-hop if you're in the suburbs [...] Kanye is a
suburban kid. The struggle is finding your place."
Glover started to find his place at college. He spent his first year at NYU mixing beats,
until graduating to writing lyrics and rapping over those beats with rhymes about girls and love.
At the time, the rap collective Wu-Tang Clan inspired a "name-generator" website.
While searching for a stage name, Glover used the site and liked one of the results:
"Childish Gambino." Glover's first commercially released album,
2011's Camp, received a mixed reception from critics. According to Pitchfork:
"[The album features] heavy topics like race, masculinity, relationships,
street cred, and 'real hip-hop' as props to construct a false outsider persona."
The singer changed his approach for his 2016 album Awaken, My Love!,
for which Glover earned critical praise and five Grammy nominations. Awaken,
My Love! cemented Glover's reputation as a hit-maker and made him one of the biggest
recording artists in America. The iconic funk jam "Redbone" even featured over the opening
credits of 2017's Get Out — which may have helped it on its way to a triple platinum sales record.
Donald Glover's success across so many forms of entertainment is a testament
to his gifted mind — but it also means multiple revenue streams have continued
So where does that money go? Well, some of it is spent on real estate. Glover has a house
in Atlanta and a studio in Los Angeles, and often rents a place in Kauai. But while this might sound
glamorous, The New Yorker has reported that Glover sleeps on a couch at the studio when he's in L.A.,
and even once drove to Target to buy a blanket and make the place cozier.
Glover also clearly has something of an altruistic streak. During an appearance on The Late Show
with Stephen Colbert, the host surprised Glover with a special guest — a little girl who went
viral by rapping about Girl Scout Cookies to the tune of Childish Gambino's hit song "Redbone."
When the young girl asked if Glover wanted to buy Girl Scout Cookies, he said:
"She needs to get 113 more cookie orders?"
"Yeah, I'll… I'll take 'em all."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite celebs are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.