Donald Glover says he didn’t get his first show business success just because of Tina Fey told him he was hired for “diversity.”
The “Atlanta” creator and star — who also raps under the name Childish Gambino — reflected on his time on “30 Rock.”” in a GQ profile posted on Tuesday. The “Swarm” creator told the magazine that he was still living in his NYU dorm room when he landed his first job writing for Fey’s NBC sitcom in 2006. Glover described himself at the time as dealing with a lot of impostor syndrome.
“I definitely didn’t feel like I needed to be there,” Glover told GQ. “I used to have stressful dreams every night when I was walking on a skyscraper in New York City with other writers watching me.”
Part of his anxiety may stem from the fact that he was hired as part of a diversity initiative at NBC, “where adding a black writer to the writers’ room didn’t count in your budget,” according to GQ. Glover said Fey told him why he was hired.
“There’s no animosity between us or anything like that, but [Tina Fey] she said it herself… It was about diversity,” Glover said. “The last two people fighting for jobs were me and [“Black-ish” creator] Kenya Barris.”
Glover laughed, adding: “I didn’t know it was between me and him until later. He hit me one day and said, “I’ve hated you for years!” “
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Despite knowing he was working on the hit NBC sitcom for budgetary reasons, Tracey Morgan, who starred in the sitcom, told GQ that Glover showed his talent and dignity working on the writing staff.
“When I first read his writing on ’30 Rock,’ I was like, ‘He’s got it,'” Morgan told GQ.
Fey has also spoken highly of Glover in the past. When Glover landed a spot on Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list in 2017, Fey was blown away by his talent.
“She worked hard and contributed many good lines,” Fey wrote in a statement to the magazine At this point. “After a few years, he asked for a meeting with me and fellow producer Robert Carlock. Donald was grateful for the opportunity, but felt he should leave to pursue acting. Of the many writers who have suggested this over the past 20 years, Donald is the only one with whom I have ever agreed. One hundred percent, he should be a star.”
Fey has also admitted in the past that Glover was hired because he is black.
In a 2018 New Yorker profile on Glover, says he felt he had talent, but was hired in part because of funding from NBC’s Diversity Initiative, which “made him free of charge.”
He also alludes to Glover’s commitment to diversity in his 2011 memoir, Bossypants, but says his contribution to diversity in the writer’s room was not based on his race.
“Donald was our only African-American writer at the time, but his real difference was that he was our only ‘nice guy’ who could tell us what ‘kids today’ were listening to,” Fey wrote in her book, via Eagle..
