We’ve been hearing snippets about Donald Glover‘s semi-autobiographical TV series Atlanta for the better part of three years now, but this is the first time we’ve gotten to witness it in action.
Glover – a.k.a. rap god Childish Gambino – created, executive produced, and stars in the show as wannabe rapper Ernest “Earn” Marks, who starts managing his cousin’s career.
“It’s the show that I kinda always wanted to see in television,” Glover says in the shoddy video recording below, which is clearly a phone recording of a TV hack job, but we’ll take what we can get at this point. 
(It’s also taken a bizarrely long time to gain media traction; for likely reasons, see previous.)
Zazie Beetz, who plays Glover’s love interest / baby momma, can also be heard saying: “In television, there is a lack of a place for people of colour to just kind of be people. Friends isn’t about white people being friends, it’s about friends and I think that that’s what makes me really feel like it’s something different.”
Friends. That sitcom set in a decade when NYC was primarily dominated by white people, except for the odd student in a ap acting class or a hastily diversified S10 love interest.
Back in January, Deadline spoke to Glover about the stupidly-talented person returning to television (after he broke an entire fandom’s hearts by leaving Community).
“I know what I’m doing a little bit,” he said. “There’s so many screens that have to be filled now, between your television, your computer and your phone, that I think it’s the perfect time to make something that I see, a perfect opportunity to combine everything that media is right now.”
“I think there’s a certain view of the world, of the actual real life world, [that is] more interesting. I mean, Donald Trump is running for president right now.” [Ed’s note: and WINNING. WTF.] “When I was eight I saw him in a Pizza Hut commercial. That’s fucking weird. There are a lot of funny things that are actually happening in the world.”
No premier date has yet been confirmed, but FX has scheduled it for a summer 2016 release.
Photo: Getty / Frederick M. Brown.
