“I feel like Samuel L Jackson in ‘Pulp Fiction'”: the TV shows Donald Glover was glad to be rejected by
Look up the definition of ‘cool’ in the dictionary, and you won’t find a picture of Donald Glover, because he’s so cool that he defies all definition.
From his early writing work for 30 Rock to his Hollywood success to his era-defining music, there is seemingly nothing he can’t do, and to top it all off, he’s going to be voicing Yoshi in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie! It’s enough success to make you sick.
Given his interest in comedy and performing, it’s no surprise that Glover was drawn to the bright lights of Saturday Night Live as a young man. The five-time Grammy winner auditioned for SNL twice, including once to play Barack Obama in a sketch, but was turned down on both occasions. This was undoubtedly a huge blow to him at the time, but as he explained to GQ in 2023, he’s actually grateful that he didn’t get in.
“I dodged so many bullets,” he confessed, “Me being on SNL would’ve killed me. I got friends who made it on SNL, and, at the time, I was like, damn. But if I got on SNL, my career wouldn’t have happened”.
It’s easy to look at the insane number of stars that SNL has produced across its long history and see it as something of a golden ticket to fame and fortune, but it’s also important to remember that not everyone who works for Lorne Michaels converts that job into superstardom.
Glover would have been very young when he auditioned for SNL, so there’s every chance that the pressure of being part of such an institution might have gotten to him or forced his career down a certain path.
SNL wasn’t the only major comedy that the man known as Childish Gambino missed out on, and he recalled a few more things that didn’t work out: “Thank God I didn’t get some of those pilots. I wanted so desperately to be on Parks and Recreation because it was the cool, hipster show. I am the bullet dodger. I feel like Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. That wasn’t a mistake, you know? God did that.”
As we all know, Glover did just fine without SNL, Parks and Rec, or any of the other shows that didn’t want him, because in 2009, the same year as his second SNL audition, he made his first appearance as Troy Barnes on Community. The loveable himbo, and one part of Troy and Abed, catapulted him to global fame and opened plenty of doors for him, after which his real artistic breakthrough came with Atlanta, the dark comedy classic that shaped an entire generation of viewers. If he’d been too busy with other commitments, there’s every chance this wouldn’t have happened.
Things came full circle for Glover in 2018 when he appeared on SNL as a host/musical guest, and he was absolutely fantastic, touted as one of the best musical hosts in the show’s history. This is the night he debuted ‘This Is America’, which many would consider to be his signature song, where, over a decade after he was told he wasn’t good enough for the main cast, this had to have felt pretty damn good.
