Donald Glover Says the ‘Fear’ from the ‘SNL’ Writers Room Was Brought Over to ’30 Rock’
Samantha Bergeson
Donald Glover has already deemed the opportunity to be a “Saturday Night Live” cast member a bullet he “dodged,” but now the multi-hyphenate creator is detailing just how much “SNL” impacted “30 Rock.”
The NBC sitcom was created by “SNL” alum Tina Fey and satirized working on a sketch series at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where “SNL” is filmed. But according to Glover, there were more parallels behind-the-scenes than just the meta mocking.
“Even though I had such a great time at ’30 Rock,’ one thing at ’30 Rock’ that I didn’t want as much of, because I feel like it was kind of a thing from ‘SNL,’ was fear,” Glover said during a recent appearance on “Hot Ones” from First We Feast. “Writers’ rooms are a scary place. I was like, ‘Yeah, I just didn’t want any fear in my room.'”
Glover opted to instead focus on creating his series “Atlanta” with a different audience in mind.
“I was like, ‘If we’re trying to make a show for somebody else, we’re fucked,'” Glover said. “So everything I’ve ever made is just like something I would watch. You can’t make it for somebody else.”
He later went on to produce “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Swarm,” among other TV series.
Glover previously told GQ that working on “30 Rock” reignited an impostor syndrome due to the “stress.”
“It definitely didn’t feel like I was supposed to be there. I used to have stress dreams every night where I was doing cartwheels on the top of a New York skyscraper with the other writers watching me,” Glover said. “There is no animosity between us or anything like that, but [Tina Fey] said it herself….It was a diversity thing. The last two people who were fighting for the job were me and Kenya Barris. I didn’t know it was between me and him until later. He hit me one day and he was like, ‘I hated you for years!'”
Glover cited that he was hired as part of a diversity initiative at NBC to join the “30 Rock” writers’ room. He began in 2006 and later auditioned for “SNL” in 2007 and 2009 to be a cast member. He was cast in fellow NBC series “Community” in 2009.
“I dodged so many bullets,” Glover added to GQ. “Me being on ‘SNL’ would’ve killed me. I got friends who made it on ‘SNL’ and, at the time, I was like, damn. But if I got on ‘SNL,’ my career wouldn’t have happened. And thank God, thank God I didn’t get some of those pilots. I wanted so desperately to be on ‘Parks and Rec’ because it was the cool, hipster show. I am the bullet dodger. I feel like Samuel L. Jackson in ‘Pulp Fiction.’ That wasn’t a mistake, you know? God did that.”
