Atlanta was a groundbreaking show that radically altered the complexion of Donald Glover’s career. Beforehand, he was Childish Gambino, a rapper, singer, and comedian with wildly creative albums we couldn’t get from anyone else. Because The Internet radically broke the mold in how we understand life online and navigate the algorithm. Donald Glover had a hand on the pulse of modern culture, and Atlanta was ushering us into the next phase of it.
However, if you pitch the show in a vacuum to a boardroom of executives, you might not get very far. Glover’s character Earnest is broke and tries to manage his cousin Paper Boi and his bubbling rap career. It’s promising on the surface, but it might not shake the room. Consequently, Donald Glover felt like he had to “Trojan horse” the FX executives to get his foot in the door.
In a lengthy profile from the New Yorker, he admitted to being prepared for Atlanta to flop on its face initially. But before that could even happen, he had to convince people he was worth letting on the air. If he was a lot more forward with the expansive vision he eventually shared, he didn’t think it would go on the air.
Donald Glover Admits to ‘Trojan Horsing’ Execs So He Could Make His Groundbreaking TV Show
“I knew what FX wanted from me,” Glover told journalist Tad Friend. “They were thinking it’d be me and Craig Robinson horse-tailing around, and it’ll be kind of like ‘Community’, and it’ll be on for a long time. I was Trojan-horsing FX. If I told them what I really wanted to do, it wouldn’t have gotten made.”
Donald Glover’s brother and longtime collaborator Stephen Glover expanded on the simple premise they gave. “Donald [Glover] promised, ‘Earn and Al work together to make it in the rough music industry. Al got famous for shooting someone and now he’s trying to deal with fame, and I’ll have a new song for him every week. Darius will be the funny one, and the gang’s going to be all together.’ That was the Trojan horse.”
FX CEO John Landgraf told the New Yorker that he wanted the weirdness from Donald Glover. Lean into it if anything. As a result, he didn’t mind the admission that the Glovers were Trojan-horsing him. “We’re in the business of making pieces of commercial television that mask deeper artistic narratives,” he said.
The post Why Donald Glover Felt Like He Had To Trick Execs in Order To Make ‘Atlanta’: ‘I Knew What FX Wanted From Me’ appeared first on VICE.
