Donald Glover — the actor/musician/standup comedian/creator of 2016’s most critically acclaimed new comedy, Atlanta — has been doing interviews as he takes a break from filming the director-switched (from Phil Lord and Chris Miller to Ron Howard) upcoming Han Solo spinoff of Star Wars, in which he’ll be playing Lando Calrissian. He appears in a huge cover story in this week’s Hollywood Reporter, and just did an interview, as Pitchfork notes, with Clara Amfo on her BBC 1 radio show. (Glover has been living in London while filming the Han Solo flick.) The two serve as comprehensive updates on all things Glover, which, given that huge compound of titles above, clearly encompasses a lot of things!
In the feature in THR, Glover‘s brother Stephen (who writes with him on Atlanta) said that there’s more music on its way from Donald, and “possible a musical movie at some point, too.” Meanwhile, Donald himself told Amfo, “I’ve been working on [music] here. You guys have been very instrumental in my music. London has been very inspirational.” (Glover formerly said that this next Childish Gambino album would be his last, but from the tiny bit his brother offered on the subject in the THR piece, it at least seems like he may find ways to infuse original music into his career down the line.)
As for the world of Star Wars, Glover discussed — to the extent that he could — the (very) last minute switching of directors, saying:
Ron is such a legend, and he knows exactly what the vision for what he is doing is … [but Phil and Chris] hired us, so you sort of feel like, ‘I know I’m not your first choice …’ And you worry about that. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what happened. I feel like I was the baby in the divorce, or the youngest child. The oldest child is like, ‘We know what’s happening, but we are keeping you out of it.’ And I’m just like, [Glover’s voice rises several octaves] ‘Was that scene good? How did you feel?’
Glover also had a chance to pick o.g. Lando Billy Dee Williams’ brain about the character. He explains their meeting in THR:
I was like, ‘I’ve always felt like this character could do this, and he represents this, and I kind of feel like he comes from here, and it’s very obvious he has a lot of taste, so maybe he grew up seeing that from afar? Because I’m like that. Maybe he saw it from other planets and was like, ‘I want to be that.’ He just let me ramble on and on, and then finally I was like, ‘So, what do you think?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t know about all that. Just be charming.’
The Han Solo spinoff — which still lacks a title — is set for release on May 25, 2018.