Donald Glover has explained how Jordan Peele was the one who convinced Liam Neeson to step into the Atlanta universe for a season three cameo.
The rapper/director/actor — otherwise known as Childish Gambino — told the story in an interview with GQ, explaining how he first approached Neeson about the cameo following his racist confession in 2019.
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The Taken star admitted to The Independent that many years ago he carried around a weapon for a week in the hopes of killing someone Black in retaliation for his close friend being raped by a Black man.
“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody — I’m ashamed to say that — and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could … kill him,” he said.
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The comments led to an immediate firestorm of backlash, and Glover said when he brought up the idea to Neeson about lightly satirizing the controversy in Atlanta, the veteran actor wasn’t interested.
“When I got in touch with him, Liam poured his heart out,” Glover told GQ. “He was like, ‘I am embarrassed. I don’t know about this. I’m trying to get away from that.’ And I was like, ‘Man, I’m telling you, this will be funny! And you’ll actually get a lot of cream from it because it’ll show you’re sorry.’”
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He continued: “So, he asked me to let him think about it. Then he sent me an email saying, ‘I don’t think I can do it and best of luck with Atlanta, blah-blah-blah.
“Liam said [after the incident] he talked to Morgan Freeman, Jordan Peele, and Spike Lee. So I was like…Jordan Peele! I hit Jordan Peele up and I was like, Look, man, I got this idea. He said that he trusted you. Tell him it’s a good idea!”
Glover said Peele thought the scene in question — which involves Bryan Tyree Henry’s character Paper Boi running into Neeson at a fittingly-titled bar called the Cancel Club — was amazing.
“Jordan thought it was hilarious!” he continued. “So Jordan talked to him. Liam hit me back and said he talked to Jordan and his son and thought it’d actually be a good thing.
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“But what was so funny is, like, I forgot to hit Jordan back. I was so excited about Liam doing it. So Jordan hit a friend of mine, and was like, ‘Am I on a prank show where Donald got me to forgive Liam Neeson? Was this a joke…on me?’”
Glover went on to say the aforementioned conversation and the scene itself brought up some interesting questions for viewers — particularly Caucasian ones.
“That was actually an interesting point of like, ‘Do we want white people to talk about how racist they are?’” he said. “Because if we do…We were like, ‘It’s kind of whack that we shat on him.’ Because, like, now white people are gonna be like, ‘I’m not going to say anything.’
“And now we’ve gaslit ourselves. They’re like, ‘I’m not racist. I’ve never been racist.’ And it’s like, then why is all this racist shit happening? I’d much rather know Liam Neeson was racist at some point. He was the only person who was like, ‘I felt horrible about it.’”
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Donald Glover’s interview with GQ comes on the heels of his new Amazon Prime Video series Swarm, which premiered in March.
To coincide with the release of the show, Glover dusted off his Childish Gambino moniker and dropped a new Swarm EP consisting of five tracks from him and singer KIRBY, who voices a fictional artist named Ni’jah.
The release marked Childish Gambino’s first new music in five years.
