Donald Glover Loves the Internet, Doesn’t Love Social Media

The last time we heard from Donald Glover, he was wooing us all with his dreamy performance of “Terrified” off Awaken, My Love! at the Grammys. On March 1, Glover will be back on our TV screens when the second season of his series Atlanta returns to FX. The Atlanta native will also be playing Lando Calrissian in a new Star Wars film set for later this year, and he’ll lend his voice to Simba in an upcoming Lion King live-action remake. Glover recently sat down with Esquire to discuss all of these recent wins and how life has changed for him as his success continues to grow.

He talked about leaving social media:

“I realized that connection was too powerful for a person like me. I just would get hurt,” he said before revealing what he uses the internet for now. “I try and find subcultures. I try and find communities. I talk to people as a regular person. It’s the only place you can be anonymous.”

Glover also discussed wanting the role of Lando years before getting it, though his agent didn’t think it was possible then:

“That was exactly what I needed to hear because I’m the person who’s not supposed to make it, so much so that I don’t think people recognize where I came from and what I’ve done. At a certain point, it does look easy. I do sometimes look like a Mary Sue. I was like, ‘Oh, okay, cool.’ I studied, I watched the movies a lot, and I killed it, because I was ready.”

He talked about why it’s important to make a show like Atlanta, which largely focuses on the black American experience:

Black people do not have the narrative over their story. It’s always been written by somebody else,” he said. “I also think it’s like we have PTSD. There’s a lot of things that have happened to us that we don’t completely understand and we’re not getting help to understand. That’s why information is so powerful and necessary. If you understand, then you don’t let it happen again.

Read the rest of the interview over at Esquire.

Follow Lawrence Burney on Twitter.