Donald Glover fans will be happy to learn that he’ll be returning to Greendale as he’s been confirmed for the forthcoming Community movie.
The cult classic sitcom by Dan Harmon gave Childish Gambino his first major acting gig, and after reports emerged at the end of September that Peacock and Sony Pictures TV had greenlit a movie, all eyes were on the creative polymath to see if he’d reunite with his old castmates.
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Joel McHale, who stars in the series as Jeff Winger, confirmed that Glover will reprise his role as Troy Barnes in an interview with Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast.
“Donald’s coming back and that’s really important,” he said. “The fact that Donald’s gonna do it, that was the big piece. But I think everyone’s coming back. I mean, so far we’re pretty good. And I think that will happen. If not then, you know, Donald will be there.”
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McHale clarified he meant everyone except for Chevy Chase, who faced a slew of controversy over the show’s six seasons for alleged toxic onset behavior.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” McHale said when asked if Chase was returning, adding sarcastically: “There wasn’t any issues at all when we were making the show.”
At the time of the film’s announcement last November, Glover had not committed to joining the cast, but Dan Harmon said the actor was “down to clown” in the upcoming movie.
Speaking at Variety’s Business Managers Breakfast, Harmon added that he’s currently writing the film and that he “can’t imagine it without series star Donald Glover.”
“For lack of a better word, there was a ball fumbled… [Glover] is down to clown,” Harmon said about Glover’s involvement with the film. “Man, I would not want to think about making [the movie] without Donald.”
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Childish Gambino had previously revived his role as Troy Barnes in 2020, when the cast of Community reunited for a virtual table read as part of a COVID-19 relief initiative benefiting Frontline Foods and José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen. At the time, he and his former castmates all said that they would be open to the idea of doing a movie.
“Watching it now, I’m like, ‘Oh, this show’s really punk,’” he said of the series. “Really subversive and like kind of punk. We had so much fun and now I’m like, ‘I want to watch this show again, like it was brand new.’”
In other news, Donald Glover made headlines in March after he admitted that he intentionally did not prepare Dominique Fishback for her role in his new show Swarm as a young serial killer obsessed with a pop star that many presumed to be a Beyoncé-esque singer.
The multi-hyphenate said in an interview with Vulture that he encouraged Fishback to act like an animal in the role.
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“I kept telling her, ‘You’re not regular people. You don’t have to find the humanity in your character. That’s the audience’s job’,” Glover said. “She really was lost a lot of the time.”
He added: “It reminds me of how I have a fear with dogs because I’m like, ‘You’re not looking at me in the eye, I don’t know what you’re capable of.”
The backlash was swift, with many people criticizing Glover’s treatment of Black women in his art in the past.
