If Donald Glover gives an Emmy acceptance speech this September for his work on the FX hit Atlanta, he might owe his dealer a thank you for creative consulting. Less than three minutes after walking onstage (wearing a red Donald Duck cardigan) at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall last night to address guests of a For Your Consideration panel, he struggled to find the right word for said supplier.
"Our drug dealer—I don't know what to call it other than that—our handler," he began, before his brother Stephen, a series writer, chimed in with, "Our weed guy." Donald resumed, "Yeah, our weed guy. Our friend. We don't know his real name—I don't want to know his real name. He knows more about television [than most people] 'cause all he does is watch television. It's like, that's all you do [when you're stoned]…He had good taste and a lot of perspective." Incidentally, during a concert as his alter-ego, Childish Gambino, Saturday night at New York's Governors Ball Music Festival, Billboard reports that Glover lit a blunt onstage, affirming, "I love good weed."
Atlanta stars Donald—the creator and showrunner, who also serves as a writer, executive producer, and executive music producer—as Earn Marks, a young Princeton dropout and father who lives part-time in a storage unit and makes $5.15 an hour recruiting airport credit card applicants. After his drug-dealing cousin, Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), releases a rap single as Paper Boi, Earn begins to manage his public-access and nightclub appearances. While evading his child-care responsibilities with his ex, Vanessa (Zazie Beetz), Earn can be found observing 4:20 with Alfred and his sidekick, Darius (played by Lakeith Stanfield), who has a gun named Daddy that he hides in a box full of cereal (although it's Alfred who shot someone last season). In a universe built from purposefully stereotypical characters, the comedy confronts mainstream TV audiences with visuals they've never seen, like a cartoon commentary on police brutality, a lavish Juneteenth party, and black Justin Bieber (played by Austin Crute).
But Donald cautioned against the multitudes viewers who think they could pal around with this surprisingly endearing crew in real life. "People I think right now are like, 'Man, I should be friends with Paper Boi,'" he said, also flanked by executive producers Dianne McGunigle and Paul Simms, producer/director Hiro Murai, and moderator Lola Ogunnaike. "You couldn't handle being around him, 'cause he actually kills people." In addition, his own erudite straight-man character is "a fuck-up," who is "not that great" and "not being a really great father."
Since January, Atlanta has been amassing coveted hardware, winning both its Golden Globe nominated-categories (Best Actor and Television Series—Musical or Comedy) and a Peabody Award. "I feel kinda guilty," Donald said. "I was the only one who had a good 2017 [so far]," the discussion's only allusion to President Donald Trump despite Atlanta's tendency to tackle polarizing headlines (Ogunnaike told Esquire that she intentionally did not ask about the White House's current occupant, seeking a brief reprieve. And Simms explained afterwards that Trump may never be addressed outright on the program: "I feel like the nature of the show is that Atlanta's its own self-contained world, and I think it will probably stay like that.")
In addition, Donald—the former 30 Rock writer and Community cut-up—is perhaps involved in more massive projects than anyone else in Hollywood. Next month, he's playing an unknown role in Spider-Man: Homecoming, co-starring Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man and Chris Evans's Captain America. Then he will portray Lando Calrissian in next year's Star Wars spinoff about young Han Solo (which is currently shooting, pushing back Atlanta's second season to Spring 2018, according to John Solberg, FX's senior vice president of communications, who introduced the panel). Also in 2018, co-creators Donald and Stephen will debut 10 episodes of an animated Deadpool series on FXX. Plus, director Jon Favreau cast Donald as Simba in Disney's live-action-looking remake of The Lion King, slated for 2019. (James Earl Jones will reprise his role as Mufasa.)
Raised in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain, Donald credited director Murai—new to television after a career in music videos—for making Atlanta appear so sumptuous, even when its inhabitants are mostly impoverished. "The show wouldn't be what it is today if it didn't look as good as it did," Donald insisted. He recalled writer Stefani Robinson making the point that "the 'hood never really gets to feel classy," arguing, "You watch The Sopranos, and they're…Italian, by-the-seashore-type people and just like, 'Well, fuck you!' 'Fuck you!' but like, that's our life. That's our life and this is how we see it…We have a culture that's important…[and] influential. [Black people] never really get to own that, and it's never shown how beautiful it is," a statement which earned applause from the audience. "But that was part of it," he continued, "Make this look as classy as it feels. When you walk in the club and you have $500 and you're just like, This shit feels good."
On the topic of an ensemble cast and a shifting narrative viewpoint, "I didn't want it to be The Donald Glover Show," he said. "I knew that could sell but I was like, It shouldn't be that. It should really just be: What is it like to be in a predominately black city?"
As for the show's prodigious use of the n-word, Simms remembered being informed by a network executive, "You used the n-word more times in this episode than in the entire history of FX." "We did make a few promises while we were going along—like, 'We'll try to finds the ones that were gratuitous,' whatever that means. At a certain point, FX said, 'It's real.'" Donald responded, "I'm always just like, 'You guys want this to be cool or not?' If you're gonna take out all the curse words, you're gonna take out all the real shit, then [viewers are] like, I'm gonna watch something real on the Internet. So like, we're fighting the Internet."
The panel concluded with Donald's terse few acknowledgments about the Han Solo movie: "It's actually gonna be tight, looks really beautiful," praising cinematographer Bradford Young (an Oscar nominee for Arrival), adding, "My mustache looks good." For a more satisfying Star Wars anecdote, he compared the advice he and his co-star received from their predecessors. "Alden [Ehrenreich] had lunch with Harrison Ford, and they were really talking on some actor shit....And I'm talking [to Billy Dee Williams], 'So what did you do?' He's like, 'Man, just be charming…If somebody likes you onset, you're doing it right.'"
