Donald Glover is out in London reveling in his Golden Globe wins, fatherhood, the success of his show Atlanta and album Awaken, My Love, and the confirmation of his upcoming roles in two major beloved film series, but he still made time to talk Los Angeles’ REAL 92.3 host Big Boy about all those aforementioned projects and more. Read excerpts and hear the interview in full below.
ON HIS UNKNOWN SPIDER-MAN ROLE: I’m not allowed to say. I’m not even allowed to leave my trailer without a hood on.
ON HIS SHOUTOUT TO MIGOS AT THE 2017 GOLDEN GLOBES: Offset hit me, like, literally right afterward and he was like, ‘Man, thank you. My grandma was crying. She was like, ‘We’re gonna be on ‘Jimmy Kimmel’ which we couldn’t get on the day before.’ They were really thankful. But that’s it. I’ve been texting him since just to check on him but I think he’s busy with Cardi B.
ON THE RUMORED COLLABO PROJECT WITH CHANCE THE RAPPER: I mean we definitely met up before. I don’t know if I’ll see him again now that he’s won a Grammy. We’ll see what happens, but yeah, we actually sat down in the studio and worked hard for a little bit. We’re both busy…I think it’s just about catching a vibe….I don’t work with people over email anymore. I think it just doesn’t make good work, but it’s just that we have to find the time to, like, sit down together.
ON ATLANTA‘S SEASON 2 NOT AIRING UNTIL 2018: It’s true. It’s written for the most part…but also there’s a bunch of stuff happening in the world, so I don’t wanna write it too early. There’s a bunch of funny stuff happening.
ON HIS AWAKEN, MY LOVE ALBUM: I was thinking it’d be nice to sing some songs that were just in my heart a little bit. When I was writing a lot of the songs, I was listening to a lot of things from Marvin Gaye to to Donnie Hathaway, so I felt like, lemme do something that felt like my heart. My heart felt very blue at the time, so I was just like, let me make some blues songs, not sad, but just blue to me.
ON CATEGORIZATION: I think genre’s dead. I really do believe people just want quality, people just want excellence. I’m getting to the point where I’m old now and I’m like, all that stuff that I liked when I was kid, they exist, but they only exist because they came from people who took those risks. Beyonce takes those risks.
ON BEING CAST AS YOUNG LANDO CALRISSIAN IN STAR WARS: I just grew the mustache, man….I had to come in, kiss the babies, do the whole campaign, it just happened. This thing just got me to the point where I don’t have to [audition] anymore, but this is like a big deal so I wanted to show them I know what I’m doing with this, so I came in there and then we had to test with people and see how our chemistry is and stuff, so it was actually like four auditions….It’s a respectful role, it’s an iconic role, you couldn’t say no to it. I take it really seriously, I been studying everyday.
ON GETTING RECOGNIZED: Depending on the demo, usually if it’s a younger person, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, Childish’ and if it’s older person, they’ll be like ‘Donald.’ Sometimes people will be like, ‘Oh, I know you from somewhere, like, are you a friend of a friend?’ It’s an awkward situation because you don’t really wanna be like, ‘Oh, I’m famous.’ But most of the time, they either say ‘Childish’ or ‘Donald’ or ‘Troy’ from Community.