Donald Glover is a better maker of television than a performer of it, and knows it. His best acting serves things he wrote, and his best writing keeps him at the edge of the frame. Atlanta is the case; the film roles are footnotes.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Earnest 'Earn' Marks in Atlanta (2016) and notice how little the man who made the show gives himself. Earn is quick and broke and not easy to like, and the writers, Glover among them, never soften him. The centre goes to Brian Tyree Henry's Alfred, the cousin with the hit single and no wish to be looked at, and Glover spends four seasons standing slightly to one side of his own programme. It is the opposite of what he did on Community (2009), where Troy Barnes was the warmest person on campus, an ex-quarterback allowed to be a boy again whenever Danny Pudi's Abed let him. Both are good performances. Only one of them is the point.
The career runs in an unusual order. He wrote for 30 Rock from 2006 to 2009, straight out of NYU, on scripts generous with small jokes as well as the ones that drive a scene. Then he acted, as Troy until 2014, and made records as Childish Gambino alongside. Atlanta (2016–2022) was the turn: he created it, wrote and directed some of it and played the lead, and by his own account the network expected something like Community and got something else. "I was Trojan-horsing FX," he said, and the show bears him out. Whole episodes pass without a gig or a meeting.
It works because of patience, and because of Hiro Murai, who directed a great many episodes and shoots a comedy about two cousins as if it were a film. The writers, Stephen Glover and Stefani Robinson among them, treat the premise as an excuse; LaKeith Stanfield's Darius says the strangest thing in any scene in the calmest voice. Alfred moved us more than we expected, a man tired of being recognised before he is famous enough for it to pay, and that is Glover's doing as much as Henry's: he wrote the part and then got out of its way. The first two seasons are close to faultless. The third loses its nerve for a while, and some viewers found its parables about race lecturing where the earlier seasons had trusted them. We half agree.
The film work is a smaller matter. His Lando in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) is vain, unhurried, dressed in mustard and burgundy by Glyn Dillon and David Crossman, and the film brightens when he walks in; he is worth the ticket on his own. Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) barely registers. Yoshi in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) is a pleasure for the minutes he has. He has since voiced Simba (2019) and made Mr & Mrs Smith (2024).
He retired the Gambino name around 2024, so what he does is now all on screen. Start with Atlanta, then Community, and take the films as an afternoon of cameos. What he makes next he will not tell anyone in advance, and on the evidence of how Atlanta got made, that is the only reliable sign that he means it.
Biography
Donald Glover is an American actor, writer, comedian and musician who performs music under the name Childish Gambino. He was born on 25 September 1983 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia. After studying dramatic writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, he joined the writing staff of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock in 2006.
Glover gained prominence for his role as Troy Barnes in the NBC series Community (2009–2014). He created, wrote, produced, directed and starred in the FX series Atlanta (2016–2022), for which he received two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. His film roles include Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) and the voice of Simba in The Lion King (2019). He voices Yoshi in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026).
