Donald Glover: From YouTube Sketches to Atlanta
Sketch kid, sitcom writer, stand-up, sitcom star, rapper, auteur. Donald Glover's career makes more sense when you see it as one long comedy apprenticeship that never really ended.
Donald Glover is a writer, actor, comedian and musician whose career started with homemade sketches on YouTube and led to Atlanta, one of the most original comedies of its era. Along the way he wrote for 30 Rock, played Troy Barnes on Community, toured as a stand-up and became Childish Gambino. This profile follows the comedy thread through all of it.
NYU and Derrick Comedy
Glover was born on September 25, 1983, at Edwards Air Force Base in California and grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, outside Atlanta. He studied dramatic writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2006.
At NYU he and a group of friends, including DC Pierson, Dominic Dierkes and Meggie McFadden, with Dan Eckman directing, formed the sketch group Derrick Comedy. They started posting videos on YouTube around 2006, when the site was brand new and almost nobody was making comedy specifically for it. Their sketches, built on absurd escalation and a willingness to be uncomfortable, became some of the first big viral comedy hits online.
In 2009 the group released a feature film, Mystery Team, about three overgrown boy detectives, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It's scrappy and low-budget, and very funny in places. It also shows the instinct that would define Glover's later work: a sweet surface hiding something darker and odder underneath. For where Derrick Comedy sits in online sketch history, see our list of essential YouTube sketches.
30 Rock (2006–2009)
Tina Fey hired Glover as a writer for 30 Rock on the strength of his writing samples while he was still very young. He spent three seasons in that room, learning network sitcom craft from Fey and Robert Carlock, a show famous for its density of jokes per minute. It was an apprenticeship in structure and pace that shows up in everything he made later, even when Atlanta deliberately slowed the pace right down.
Stand-up
Glover also worked as a stand-up in the late 2000s and early 2010s. He taped a Comedy Central Presents half-hour and released an hour-long special, Weirdo, in 2012. His stand-up was more conventional than his later TV work, energetic and personal, playing on being a nerdy Black kid who didn't fit people's expectations. It's worth watching for how directly it states themes that Atlanta would later handle obliquely.
Community and Troy Barnes (2009–2014)
In 2009 he was cast as Troy Barnes, a former high-school football star, on Dan Harmon's NBC sitcom Community. Troy's friendship with Abed (Danny Pudi) became the heart of the show, and their goofy, fantasy-driven double act, from their fake morning show to their homemade blanket forts, is one of the best comic pairings in 2010s TV. Glover's gift for physical comedy and childlike sincerity made Troy the show's breakout character.
Glover left early in the fifth season, in 2014. By then his music career as Childish Gambino was taking off, and he wanted to make his own work.
Atlanta (2016–2022)
Atlanta, which Glover created for FX, follows Earn (Glover), a broke Princeton dropout trying to manage his cousin's rap career. It ran four seasons. Glover built it with a tight circle of collaborators: his brother Stephen Glover, writers Stefani Robinson and Ibra Ake, and director Hiro Murai, who directed most episodes.
What made it remarkable was its refusal to be one kind of show. Some episodes are straightforward hangout comedy; others turn into horror, fake TV broadcasts, fables or surreal one-offs that barely feature the main characters. The fake late-night talk show episode "B.A.N.", complete with invented commercials, and the eerie "Teddy Perkins" are the most cited examples. The third and fourth seasons went further, mixing in standalone episodes about race in America that function as dark satirical short films.
In 2017 Glover won Emmys for lead actor in a comedy and for directing a comedy series, becoming the first Black director to win that directing category, and the show won Golden Globes for best comedy series and best actor.
Childish Gambino
Glover's music career began as a side project and became a global one. Early Childish Gambino records like Camp (2011) were full of the same comic self-awareness as his stand-up. "This Is America" (2018), with its video directed by Hiro Murai, won four Grammys in 2019, including record and song of the year. In 2024 he released Bando Stone & the New World and its accompanying film, which he had said would be the final Childish Gambino album.
Swarm, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and recent work
- Swarm (Prime Video, 2023), co-created with Janine Nabers, is a horror-satire about an obsessive pop fan. It's closer to thriller than comedy, but carries Atlanta's taste for dread.
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Prime Video, 2024), co-created with Francesca Sloane, reimagines the 2005 film as a slow-burn series about two lonely spies in an arranged marriage, with Glover and Maya Erskine. Competing in the drama categories, it earned 16 Emmy nominations, including lead actor and writing nods for Glover. A second season was ordered with a new lead couple.
- Films include Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), and the voice of Simba in The Lion King (2019).
- 2006
Derrick Comedy and 30 Rock
YouTube sketches; hired as a TV writer.
- 2009
Mystery Team and Community
A Sundance film and his breakout acting role.
- 2012
Weirdo
His hour-long stand-up special.
- 2016
Atlanta premieres
Two Emmys for Glover in 2017.
- 2018
"This Is America"
Four Grammys the following year.
- 2024
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Sixteen Emmy nominations.
Why he matters to alt comedy
Glover is the clearest example of the internet-era path from alt comedy to the mainstream. He started making sketches for an online audience before that was a career, learned craft in a top network writers' room, and then used his clout to make a TV show stranger than almost anything on network television. He's also part of a generation of showrunners with alt comedy roots who brought the formal play of sketch and stand-up into prestige TV.
Frequently asked questions
When did Donald Glover do stand-up comedy?
Mostly in the late 2000s and early 2010s, alongside his writing and Community work. He taped a Comedy Central Presents half-hour and released the hour-long special Weirdo in 2012.
Did Donald Glover go to NYU?
Yes. He studied dramatic writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and graduated in 2006. He formed the sketch group Derrick Comedy with fellow NYU students.
What was Derrick Comedy?
A sketch group formed by Glover and friends at NYU, including DC Pierson, Dominic Dierkes and Meggie McFadden, with director Dan Eckman. Its YouTube sketches were among the first big online sketch hits, and the group made the feature film Mystery Team (2009).
Why did Donald Glover leave Community?
He left early in the fifth season, in 2014, to focus on other projects, including his music as Childish Gambino and what became Atlanta.
Is Donald Glover in season 2 of Mr. & Mrs. Smith?
The series was renewed, but Glover and Maya Erskine are not returning as the title couple; the second season is planned with new leads.