Donald Glover claims Tina Fey told him he was a ‘diversity hire’
Atlanta creator and Community star Donald Glover has reflected on his time on the comedy series 30 Rock. In a new interview, he claims that the show’s creator and lead, Tina Fey, told him he was a “diversity hire”.
The actor, who has also found tremendous success as the musician Childish Gambino, was speaking in a new interview with GQ when he explained how he secured his first writing job on 30 Rock. Per his account, he got the gig in 2006, when he was living in a dorm in New York City. However, he claimed he felt like an outsider at the time, only to find later he was hired for diversity purposes.
“It definitely didn’t feel like I was supposed to be there,” Glover told GQ. “I used to have stress dreams every night where I was doing cartwheels on the top of a New York skyscraper with the other writers watching me.” He later discovered that he was only hired on a diversity basis, which Tina Fey confirmed.
“There is no animosity between us or anything like that, but [Tina Fey] said it herself… It was a diversity thing,” he continued. “The last two people who were fighting for the job were me and Kenya Barris. I didn’t know it was between me and him until later. He hit me one day and he was like, ‘I hated you for years!'”
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