Donald Glover and the “Atlanta” writing team have recalled how they were racially harassed while shooting season three in London last year.
During the Television Critics Association’s virtual winter press conference last week, Donald and his co-writers, Stefani Robinson and Stephen Glover, discussed how they were approached by a group of people near a closed bar one night while they were in production in the British capital in April 2021.
One of the men asked the crew whether they could break into the venue because “you guys all carry hammers.”
Hammer is a slang term for a gun.
“It was so insulting, but not insulting at the same time because it took us five minutes to fully understand,” Stefani explained, before describing how the encounter began to escalate. “He got to a point of like if the insinuation was lost on us, he got specific and he was like, ‘You guys are Black, you’ve gone to jail and you do things like that.’ Like he kept doubling down on it.”
In addition, Stephen – who is Donald’s brother – recounted how the Atlanta writers were speaking to a woman when one of the men from the group started making offensive allegations.
“She’s talking to us. And then, after a minute, the guy just runs back down the street and grabs her and throws her over his shoulder, and he’s like, ‘Run. They are going to rape you, like, rape you.’ The girl was literally, like, ‘I’m sorry,’ as she’s being taken away. So, it was pretty bad,” continued Stephen, while Donald added: “We are just standing there, like, ‘What just happened?'”