Donald Glover interviewed himself for Interview magazine in a piece published Thursday, and the only way to truly convey the unhinged nature of the Q&A is by giving an example of what it is like. And I, Elyse Wanshel, the writer of this post, apologize in advance:
ELYSE WANSHEL: Hi, Elyse Wanshel, the writer of this post.
ELYSE WANSHEL: Hi.
Hello.
Do you know what I’m thinking?
No. Tell me.
How do you not know what I’m thinking? I am you.
I’m sorry. I just read Donald Glover’s interview in Interview magazine where he interviews himself, and my brain has melted.
Melted like homemade ice cream sprinkled with foie gras made by the internet on a farm upstate after quitting social media and releasing the rap equivalent of ”OK Computer”?
ELYSE and ELYSE: [Laughing] I hope so!
At the top of the interview, Glover explains that he’s chatting with himself because he doesn’t like interviews, and feels the questions he tends to be asked “are usually the same.”
“This way I can get questions I usually don’t get asked,” he tells the interviewer, who is him.
Actually, many of the questions Glover asks himself are pretty standard — like “Who do you see yourself as?” and “Are you still making music?” — but the often jarring piece does offer a few interesting tidbits. Glover tells Glover that he models himself after Willy Wonka, gets mad at himself for asking whether he’s afraid of Black women, and believes “The Sopranos” is the only show that’s as good as his FX series “Atlanta.”
He also feels that “Because the Internet,” the Grammy-nominated album he released in 2013 as Childish Gambino, is a “classic.”
“It’s the rap OK Computer,” Glover tells himself, referring to Radiohead’s widely acclaimed 1997 release. “It’s prescient in tone and subject matter and it’s extremely influential. And I know no one’s gonna give me that until I’m dead. But it’s true.”
He also reveals that his biggest fear (another fairly standard interview question — just sayin’) is losing his mother, leading to a surprisingly sweet moment tucked away in an undeniably messy interview.
“That’s hard. Because that’s gonna happen someday,” Glover the Interviewer tells Glover the Interviewed.
“I think it’s not even that,” Glover replies. “I think it’s more I’m just in love with her right now. It brings me a lot of joy to give her joy. Our relationship now is something I’ve never known. I get to be the caretaker. She’s teaching me how to be old. I think I’m seeing her as a woman and not my mom for the first time.”
He also touches on Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s exit from his “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” series for Amazon, chalking it up to “classic creative differences.” When the news was revealed in August, The Hollywood Reporter described it as an “amicable split.”
Glover then asks himself if he and Waller-Bridge are still friends.
“What does it mean to be a friend? I still like her,” Glover tells Glover. “I assume she still likes me.”
He also said that Maya Erskine, best known for “PEN15,” is now playing Mrs. Smith opposite Glover, and he’s almost done writing the full season.
This writer wasn’t alone in being confused by the piece. Many Twitter users were bewildered:
To learn more about Glover’s opinions on Joe Rogan, “Euphoria” and cancel culture, head over to Interview to try to make sense of read the whole thing.
The interview between Elyse and Elyse was condensed and edited for clarity, as though “clarity” means anything in this context.