Dave Chappelle Is as Impressed With Donald Glover as You Are

Dave Chappelle is clearly a Donald Glover fan, saying in a recent interview that everything dude does is "damn good."

January 19, 2017

Image via Joe Pugliese / WIRED
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Donald Glover, who definitely had a better 2016 than you or I did, received the expansive feature treatment in the February issue of Wired. Glover spoke on the journey of Atlanta from thought to conception, his early inspirations, and even got some words of praise from the one and only Dave Chappelle in the must-read dissection of the ever-expanding Gambino universe.

"I can't keep up with all the shit he's doing, but it's all damn good," Chappelle toldWired's Allison Samuels. "That he can do it all blows me away. But my show was a sketch show, and Donald's is more of a regular sitcom. And then we're in a different time. Race is more nuanced today, and that helps the message. It's been 10 years."

For Glover, who also cites confirmed classic The Bernie Mac Show as an inspiration, the strength of Atlanta is the honesty found in the writers' room. "On some level, the situation Dave faced is probably already happening," Glover toldWired. "But that's why it's so good to have a room filled with people who understand what you're trying to do. You've got to have someone willing to say 'I don't enjoy that.' That makes you step back and rethink when someone says that shit doesn't work."

FX general manager John Landgraf echoed Chappelle's praise of Glover's multifaceted creative ability. "With Donald, he didn't always articulate his vision in a way that we could see it, but his passions and ambition were clear," Landgraf said. "So we felt confident in the story he wanted to tell and how he wanted to tell it." Good call, John. Peep the full Wired piece here.