Actor, musician, producer, DJ, writer, director; stand-up. Nearly a decade in the making, Donald Glover’s polymath career now begs the question: is he the most important figure in modern show-business? By Peter Wallace.
Just two years ago, Donald Glover may have been a regular feature on comedy series and tirelessly working away under his musical alter ego, Childish Gambino, but he was in no way a recognizable face around the world. In fact, much of his early work saw the Californian-native delivering his best material behind-the-scenes as a writer rather than taking the spotlight himself.
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Nowadays, a world without Glover seems inconceivable. Kicking things off with comedydrama Atlanta – a show in which the prodigiously talented Glover writes, directs, produces and stars – and his breakthrough album as Gambino, Awaken, My Love!, there was a building sense for some time that Glover was on the cusp of greatness. That pinnacle arrived this year with the Jim Crow-referencing, social-commentary-cummusic-video for Glover’s song This is America. Its debut at number one aside, the track amassed nearly 13 million views in the first 24 hours of its release, ensuring its status as the year’s most talked about music video (the current total stands at a mind boggling 442 million).
Regardless of the stats, Glover reflects on his participation in one of 2018’s biggest showbiz moments with typical languidness. “I am super happy about it,” the 35-year-old says. “It’s always great to be part of the conversation. It’s cool to be able to be part of that Ouija board of culture a little bit.”
Increasingly, Glover isn’t just appearing briefly but dominating that cultural Ouija board – his name is appearing with a regularity that would alarm even the most emboldened of spirithunters. If This is America wasn’t enough, then his subsequent projects – from a starring role as a young Lando Calrissian in Star Wars spinoff Solo, to lending his voice to the upcoming Disney live-action The Lion King remake as Simba – surely confirm suspicions that Glover is coming to the zenith of his time on the silver screen.
“Films like Star Wars, they feel riskier to me,” he nods. “Because it’s like the Iliad or the Odyssey, but it’s not based on a book. Subconsciously it doesn’t feel like they [the producers] were hedging their bets. They were not like: ‘This already had an audience.’ They tried it, and it could have failed, and it didn’t. Somebody really cared about it.”
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That same sense of timelessness exudes from Glover; a perceptible aura that creations like This is America or Atlanta will have a lasting impact. His handle on all forms of artistic creation bridge a gap from the past. Glover is the closest thing modern show business has to a Renaissance Man, even if he sees it as less a mark of unbridled talents and more a logical taking of the many chances the 21st century has afforded him.
“I want to be interesting and speak a truth that people have to talk about,” he muses. “And I feel that’s easier to do over multiple media. I never really think of myself as trying to touch everything. Now this is the first time it’s easy to do that; technology has changed, and the way audiences enjoy things is different. It was harder for George Lucas to do movies and TV at the same time. It’s way easier for me and I have to take advantage.”
Even so, Glover’s haul of entertainment accolades – not least the Emmy, Grammy and Golden Globe he can lay claim to – signify that his recent projects stand on their own in terms of their significance. “I tend to shy away from the word important,” he shrugs. “On Atlanta, one thing we always say is: We don’t want to preach about anything. We live in such important times and everything is so important. I also saw it when Girls came out. Everybody said when Girls came out, ‘This is so important and then by the second season nobody watched it. They were like: ‘Yeah, we know it’s good, it’s important.’ But it wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t interesting.”
But This Is America was important. It’s amalgamation of influences from across cinema and American society, from ground-breaking 2017 horror Get Out to the continuing threats of police brutality and gun violence, probably seemed to many as far a departure from Glover’s permagrinning Community alter ego, Troy, as could be fathomed. At a time where another Donald seems hellbent on stealing every headline with ever more egregious acts of indecency, Glover is becoming the perfect antidote to widespread division: dedicated, multi-talented, and mature enough to be faware of his own exponential, if hard-earned, success.
“You’re always ready, but you’re always not ready; it’s never really a good time,” he said earlier this year on his current reputation. “I’m happy that it happened when it happened because I don’t know if I would’ve handled it in the way that I have the ability to handle it now.”
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Perhaps comparing this Donald to his Presidential namesake is a stretch: there’s very little in the way of connecting factors apart from their matching monikers. But the past twelve months have seen Glover’s light eclipse even closer contemporaries. This was the year that Kanye seemed to stumble relentlessly from one high-profile blunder to another, and even Drake, a musician Glover looked to emulate in his earliest years, saw his dependable commercial successes offset by a nasty feud with Pusha T. Amidst this mire, Glover’s Gambino track Feels Like Summer came swimming in This Is America’s wake, referencing Kanye’s troubles explicitly.
It sent keyboard investigators scrabbling to connect reality to the video’s cartoonish counterpart, but even more explicitly did it place Glover/Gambino at the center of African American music. Even five years ago, this would have looked like an arrogant overstatement of intent on Glover’s part. Now, his inclusion is no less eyebrow-raising than his upcoming work on The Lion King alongside, among others, Chiwetel Ejiofor, James Earl Jones, and Beyoncé.
“When I was growing up it was harder for people to understand someone like me”, he says, “but that is kind of coming back. That Rat Pack thing, you can do music and comedy on the side. You can do that now because people are coming to you from so many different angles.
And it’s a global market. It’s not that weird to do it in London or Africa [but] in America people want to streamline the way they make money. Everywhere else people are like ‘He’s a showman – he does what he wants.’” This mantra obviously appeals to Glover’s own sensibilities. This Is America, for example, was released while the artist himself was hosting an episode of Saturday Night Live. At the same time that Glover was making a debut appearance as MC of one of America’s most traditionally popular TV shows, Gambino was putting down a marker for the year’s pop culture moment. How many current stars could pull that off? And, perhaps more to the point, where does he go from here?
The seismic consequences of This Is America have left the world’s eyes tracking Glover’s every move. It’s a glare under which many of those before him have found themselves petrified, but there’s no sense of apprehension regarding a potential calcification or stagnation on Glover’s part. At 35, he’s already moved from comedy to drama, through soul, funk, hip-hop, cinema, music, stand-up, even fatherhood: “I haven’t really had to change anything,” he says of his relationship with young sons, Legend and Drake. “But it’s definitely given me another perception on what life is. It gives me a lot of context.”
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The same can be said of his connection to the wider zeitgeist – that “Ouija Board” of pop culture. Yes, there’s an extraordinary, amorphous quality to his output on stage, on screen, or in the studio. But it’s rooted to places and people in the same way that This Is America will be forever entwined with 2018 in the annals of human history, and whatever comes next from Glover/Gambino will no doubt be utterly different, and unquestionably more of the same.
“Atlanta to me hasn’t changed in a long time and it always seems to be a place that is reflecting black culture as a whole and is the epicentre of a lot of cultures,” he muses. “And I think if you’re a great storyteller you have to talk about who we are and I don’t want to label it – I’m just out here to make good things and I’m honored to be a part of it but I hope the honor comes later when I can sit back and take a look at it.”
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The original version of this story ran in The Edition, the magazine of British luxury brand Astleys of London.
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