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Donald Glover has never downplayed his quirky oddball sense of humor, and the 38-year-old multihyphenate puts it on full display as the feature article of the Spring 2022 edition of Interview Magazine. The publication (founded by another legendary oddball comedian, Andy Warhol) normally spotlights “intimate conversations between the world’s most creative people,” so Glover chose to sit down with someone he knew more intimately than anyone: himself.
Interestingly, the Atlanta superstar pulled a similar move just over a decade ago for Rolling Stone in “Battle: Donald Glover vs. Childish Gambino.”
“I guess I don’t love interviews and I asked myself, ‘Why don’t you like interviews?'” Glover openly inquired of himself for Interview. “And I think part of it is that the questions are usually the same. This way I can get questions I usually don’t get asked.” And when the performer asked himself if it’s hackneyed for anyone to conduct an interview this way. “I don’t think it’s more contrived than any other interview,” he replied.
Glover’s approach employs a very confessional, “stream-of-consciousness” tone as he covers a wide array of subjects. He addressed the comparisons between his own FX series and that of another rapper on the network, why he and Phoebe Waller-Bridge are no longer working together on the Mr. and Mrs. Smith reboot, and his thoughts on attempts to cancel Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle. But Glover also gets personal and lets readers catch a glimpse of “the man behind the mask” when he talks about his parents.
“What’s a good man to you?” he asks. And for this, he mentions Donald McKinley Glover Sr. and how he taught his son to embrace loving his masculinity. “Someone who knows themselves,” the artist responds to himself. “Who loves themselves. My father was really gentle with us. Physically and mentally. It felt radical at the time.”
“There’s physical danger in men-love,” Glover continued. If someone doesn’t understand what they’re feeling, it could get violent. I don’t think women usually have to deal with that, unless they’re dealing with men. But to be clear, this isn’t me saying men are bad, but the worlds are just different.”
But for someone who’s achieved so much success in his life yet still has higher heights to scale, what’s his greatest fear? “Losing my mother,” Glover says in a moment of vulnerability. “Our relationship now is something I’ve never known… I think I’m seeing her as a woman and not my mom for the first time.”
However the Spring 2022 edition is not all one-person pieces. Elsewhere in the mag, Supreme’s creative director Tremaine Emory talks with Pusha T about his lengthy body of work and longevity in rap, which is always considered a young man’s game. “I’m trying to become the Martin Scorsese of street rap,” the 44-year-old lyricist told Emory, namechecking the iconic American filmmaker. “I want that brand.”
And thespian Jeremy Strong chats with fellow method actor Adrien Brody to discuss the value of throwing all of oneself into a performance. “That’s the beauty of art,” Brody reflected. “Most artists suffer through their lifetime, and infuse their work with that suffering or use their art as a way to surmount the pain of that awareness.”
Read more of what Glover, Pusha T, Brody, and more have to say in the Spring 2022 edition of Interview Magazine.
