Donald Glover has opened up about his professional “divorce” from Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Back in 2021, it was announced that the two actors would be teaming up to co-create and star in a TV reboot of Mr And Mrs Smith, based on the 2005 film of the same name.
However, it was later revealed that the Fleabag actor had stepped down from the project due to creative differences, with Donald staying on and PEN15 star Maya Erskine taking over as the show’s female lead.
During a joint interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Atlanta star was asked about Phoebe’s departure, admitting it felt like a “divorce in a weird way”.
“You’re like, ’Oh shit, this should have worked’,” he recalled, explaining: ”It might’ve just been cultural.
“You’ve got to think, Fleabag was written entirely by her, they don’t really do writers rooms in the UK, and I look back at Atlanta, and we built a culture where we could say mean things to each other or be like, ‘That idea is kind of [crap],’ and then we’d laugh.”
“I don’t think we ever felt comfortable enough with each other,” he said of the Killing Eve creator. “And that’s OK. That’s what happens when you’re two captains. It’s like, ‘This is how I run my ship’, ‘Well, this is how I run my ship’. And it’s such a big idea, this show, I don’t think it can have two captains.
“I mean, she re-wrote the pilot, and I saw her script and I was like, ‘It’s definitely not my style’, but if she’d done it with her in it, we’d all be like, ‘This is a great fucking show’.”
Donald later added: ′I feel like Phoebe wasn’t fully in love with the thing. But I feel really good about the fact that if the thing was feeling more like hers and she was like, ‘I just love this’, I would have been like, ‘You should have it’.”
All eight episodes of Mr And Mrs Smith debuted on Prime Video last week, with Sharon Horgan, Alexander Skarsgård, Michaela Coel and Sarah Paulson among the supporting cast.
Before teaming up on their short-lived Mr And Mrs Smith, both Donald (also known to music fans as Childish Gambino) and Phoebe both starred in the Star Wars prequel Solo.
Donald played a young Lando Calrissian, while Phoebe lent her voice to a new android character, L3-37.
Read Donald and Maya’s full joint interview in The Hollywood Reporter here.