Childish Gambino is the musical stage name of the actor/comedian Donald Glover. Glover got the name from a Wu-Tang name generator he found online. He also produces music and DJs under the name "mcDJ."
Along with performing rap as Childish Gambino, actor Donald Glover stared on the TV show Community and wrote skits as part of the sketch comedy troupe Derrick Comedy. The group even released a full-length movie in 2009 called Mystery Team that played in a limited number of theaters. He went on to land roles on many big movies, including The Muppets (2011), The Martian (2015) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), where he played Lando Calrissian.
In May 2010, Glover started a Twitter campaign to land an audition for the role of Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man creator Stan Lee voice his support, but Glover didn't get the audition and the role went to Andrew Garfield. One year later, Marvel artist Brian Michael Bendis revealed an African-American Spider-Man. Bendis said the character was created before Glover's campaign but the actor heavily influenced his concept of what the new Peter Parker should look like.
In 2017, joined the franchise when he played Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
2011 was a huge year for Childish Gambino. Not only did he perform at the Bonnaroo, Comic-Con, and South-by-Southwest festivals, but he announced to the crowd at the Rock the Bells festival that he had signed a major-label deal with Glassnote Records. His major-label debut Camp was released later that year.
Childish Gambino says he spent a huge part of his freshmen year in college just making beats. A friend gave him a ripped version of the beat-making program Fruity Loops and after that, the rapper says he "skipped class and didn't leave his room for a week."
Childish Gambino told
GQ that his karaoke song is "
Kiss From A Rose" by Seal. The rapper says "You're never alone by the time you have to sing 'Baby!' in the chorus." He also says that he respects Seal's range and that he legitimately likes that song.
In an interview with GQ, Childish Gambino said he great at cooking osso buco, which is veal shanks with vegetables. He says the key is to slow roast everything and that the marrow in the veal is the best part so you can't let it get too dry.
Gambino says the worst things a critic has ever said about him were that he was "fake and lying" and "only in it to make money." The rapper laughed off the criticism, saying, "Because that's what we know about the record industry – boatloads of money coming into it by the day!"
Donald Glover told Billboard magazine how he juggles his musical, acting and comedy commitments. "In my house, I have an empty room: I have my studio there, a whiteboard with the Atlanta scripts, a canvas for painting and all my albums and DJ equipment," he explained. "I wake up every morning and I start grabbing things - spray-painting the walls, recording, writing. They're all connected for me. It's all about trying to get to the bottom of what being a human is."
He was hired at 23 to become a writer for the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, which he did for three seasons starting in 2006. It was a spec script he wrote for The Simpsons at college that got him the gig.
He starred in and created the groundbreaking TV series Atlanta, which "earn"ed him his first pair of Emmys in 2017: Best Directing In A Comedy Series and Lead Actor In A Comedy Series. The series chronicles the rise of an Atlanta rapper who goes by Paper Boi. Glover, though, plays his manager. Paper Boi is played by Brian Tyree Henry, a classically trained actor who is not a rapper.
Donald Glover used to have the social media handle of @donglover until he realized many people were misreading this username as Dong Lover. He now sports the username @donaldglover on X and @childishgambino on Instagram.
In 2024, Glover retired Childish Gambino with the farewell album Bando Stone & the New World. He's threatened to retire Gambino before though, only to keep using the moniker.
