Stephen Glover welcomes your frustration. Or your praise. As long as you feel some way about the freshly concluded third season of Atlanta, Glover—who serves as a writer/executive producer on the FX series—thinks the writers room he shepherds alongside his brother Donald has done its job.
Last week the season came to a close with a finale that featured almost none of the main cast, posed more questions than answers, and left viewers confused about what was happening, when it was happening, or if it all was even real. It’s a fitting end to a season that, after a four-year hiatus, quickly went from being one of television’s most anticipated to one of its most divisive. Donald Glover’s FX brainchild has always used its surface status as a sitcom about the rap industry to tell hyper specific stories about Blackness with a surrealist streak. But in season 3, the Glovers and their writers leaned into the surrealism hard, sometimes to tell stories that didn’t feature or even directly impact the main cast of endearing characters (played by the stellar Brian Tyree Henry, Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz and Glover himself) we’ve become accustomed to.
It’s a season full of wild swings, from trading the titular city for a handful of European locales as Henry’s Paper Boi goes on tour, to the four episodes that function as self-contained short stories imbued with so many horror overtones and pointed racial commentaries that all they were missing was a Rod Serling intro. Needless to say, viewers who were expecting more straightforward rap world hijinks from Paper Boi and Darius were left frustrated.
Stephen Glover emerged early in the series as a writers room MVP, penning some of the show’s funniest, sharpest episodes. His season opener “Three Slaps,” which is basically a beat-for-beat retelling of the Devonte Hart tragedy (only with a much happier ending), was the first sign that this was not going to be a collection of episodes that hewed to expectations or formula. Now that the season’s concluded, Glover got on a call with GQ to explain, defend and champion all of the radical choices he, his brother and their cohorts masterminded this season, from controversial celebrity cameos like Liam Neeson to abandoning the main cast for weeks at a time.
I watched the finale a couple of days ago… insane episode. This has been a very bold season of television, to say the least.
Yeah, I know it’s polarizing, it seems—I didn’t expect it to be so polarizing, but I think that’s probably the best thing you can hope for now. Not like in a Lauren Boebert way of just saying something stupid and then two sides fight about it. But I think when things are challenging or thought provoking, there’s going to be a conversation and I think that’s the best thing we could have hoped for, in my opinion.
Have you been tapped into the conversation online or do you steer clear of that?
No, not really. I’ve seen some comments. I can’t help but see some people saying, “Man, this season is mid or this season is trash.” But I also see a ton of people who are like, “This is the greatest thing ever.” I was telling some of the writers yesterday, “I don’t think people realize how hard it is to get someone to say, “this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life” and someone else to say, “this is trash” about the same thing. So, we’re doing something.
Take me back to the beginning of the process of breaking this season. I talked to Stefani and she said that you guys came up with most of it in 2019.
We started the writer’s room at the end of the summer, early fall of 2019. And everybody had some ideas already. We had been mulling things over because we had been away for probably a year and some change. We had a few new people in the writer’s room and we started the same way we did with season two. First, we just talked about ideas we had. But then we just started talking about things that we were into and things we had learned and seen. Things that interested us, different stories and articles, things that happened to people or happened to us. We just talked for probably a week and a half, two weeks in the room, just talked about different stuff.
And we just started coming up with episode ideas or pitching things and we kept coming across these ideas that were really funny or interesting—but they have nothing to do with our characters at all. They’re just funny ideas we came up with. So then we were like, “Alright we’ll just throw that to the side.” And we just kept doing that. We kept coming up with stuff for the main characters and we kept coming up with random stuff. So we ended up—I think it was after we came up with the “Three Slaps” episode idea, we were like, “This is hilarious… but I don’t know.” And I remember Donald was like, “This is great. This should be the first episode.” We were like, “That seems pretty intense, but…” And then we just started talking about what if we did a bunch of these—we were calling them “step outs” at the time, like stepping out of our main characters. We realized we were talking about these big themes. And we were like, “Oh, actually it does work.” Thematically, all these ideas are the same, even the ones we have for our main characters. And we just started going from there, just crafting it. And I think by the end, definitely by the time we were finished with season three everyone was really happy with it because I think it encompassed so many things that we wanted to get out of the season, which is to try a new flavor, to do something different.
And to also capture our characters. It is not their first time overseas, but it’s our first time seeing them and seeing what that feels like being in this bigger world while also still having your Atlanta roots, the things you come across and how you try and navigate that and what you learn. So by the end of season three all the writers were really happy. We’re like, “Yo, this is great. This season’s going to be fantastic.” Which doesn’t always happen. We’re always happy about the things at the end, but usually there’s a feeling of, “Man, like we could have done that.”
We have a funny thing where one of our writers, my friend Swank, he’ll text all of us when the season’s over. He’ll be like, “Yeah. It was alright. But we could do…” Like right when we’re at our highest mode, he is like, “Yeah, don’t get too cocky. It kind sucked and we could do better.” But this time everybody was like, “Yo, this is going to be great.” And then right where we were about to start shooting it COVID happened. So it pushed everything back a year.
But you guys felt good enough that you didn’t feel like you had to go in and tweak anything when you finally came back?
Yeah, we were coming around towards the end of working on season four when COVID started. So we had to move to zoom rooms and stuff which was weird. But we talked about that even while we were working on season four. Like “do we need to change anything? Do we need to acknowledge COVID in some way? “And we were like, that’s dumb, what’s the point? Like we need to remind people that COVID happened. Our world has an invisible car in it. Who cares?”
So yeah, we were really confident. Like I said, we were happy with the way this season had come out already. So as far as tweaks and major things like, Is this going to feel old? We were like, “Actually I think it’s still super relevant.” All these things happened in that short amount of time and every time something would happen, we’d be like, wow, that was close to what we were talking about or these are all around these things that we already talked about. So we were like, we’re already ahead of the game. There was nothing to go back and try and redo or re-break.
Season two ended with a Europe trip. Once you announced the setting of season 3, a lot of people thought this would be that trip. So what went into the idea to do a time jump?
We talked about starting right where season two left off. And we were like, “Why?” I think with us it always comes down to, what’s more interesting? I know it’s a very TV thing to be all, here’s where we left off and let’s pick right back where we started. But we’re cynical. Like no one cares, really. They just want to see good stuff. So we realized if we jump forward a little bit, it’s not going to hurt us. It’ll help with the stories we can do. And for us, it just felt better than trying to be like, here’s exactly where we stopped.
And I think also the time jump helps you just get the sense of where everybody is right now, without having to explain it. As much as people are probably like, “I want to see Paper Boi’s rise in rap”, I’m like, do you actually want to see that? Do you want to see him like slowly work his way up the rap ladder? It’s not that interesting. We get it, he’s here now. You already know what he’s about. Here’s where he is right now and let’s focus on these stories.
It sounds like you guys always go in looking for the least formulaic way to tell the story.
I think we just go in trying to do something different and interesting. With the first three seasons we definitely were like, with season one let’s try and do whatever we think is funny and different. Then season two, it’s, let’s try and make a more cohesive narrative for the whole season. Season three was, what do we do this time to make it feel a little bit different? So we’re always just trying to give people something that they need, but not necessarily what they want.
A lot of the time fans are like, “Just give me the same thing over and over again.” And they end up hating it. No matter what we did, there’s always going to be people who say season one is the best and it never got better than that. Or season two was the best and it never got better than that. So it was like, let’s just give people what we the writers personally feel is the better thing and hopefully they’ll like it too. But I think a lot of TV gets boring. Lately, I’ve been against TV that’s really strung together, like eight seasons where every episode tags into the next one. Somebody will be like, “Hey, start watching Ozark.”
And I’m like, “Can I just turn on Ozark?” It’s like, “No, you got to start at episode one and work your way through all 20 seasons.” There’s something nice about American Dad where you can just hop into any episode and it’s fun. And that was the idea with this season. Season two is more connective, and in order for the ending to make sense, you need to see the beginning. We were like [this time] let’s just have this thing where every episode feels like anybody can come into it. I saw people online being like, “Oh season 3 is coming back. I got to watch seasons 1 and 2 to refresh my memory.” And I was like, “No, you don’t. You’re not going to have to do that at all.” And I think that helps the language of the show in a different way when people can just hop in.
The big deal this season has been what you called the step out episodes. Stefani referred to them as all dealing with The Curse of Whiteness. I’ve seen people react to them as if you guys made a Black Black Mirror. Let’s just unpack all of that. How did you guys arrive at the decision to devote pretty much half the season to these short stories? In what ways do they connect to the overall themes of the show?
The Curse of Whiteness ties up the themes we had been talking about and mulling over. We realized, “Oh, there’s something really cool here.” There’s a guy on CNN, I can’t remember his name right now, but it was a viral clip of him where he was talking about how white people are cursed too and how racism curses both of us, Black people and white people. And me and Donald were like, “That’s a really smart and interesting way to look at it.” Because there’s just so many things where you would assume that racism is bad for Black people, but it’s like, “No, it’s actually bad for you guys too.” You think it’s just only affecting us, but it’s also affecting you.
Even the episode where Darius goes to the Nigerian restaurant, he takes the woman with him. We were just laughing about when we were in the writer’s room in LA and we would try and order ethnic food. And there’s always the one that’s on Postmates or whatever, which is really gentrified and like white. I think we did Caribbean food and it was horrible. We’re like this tastes terrible, it’s not good. Most of us had been to London before, too. We’re like, “Man, the food there is bad too.” And you start to realize it’s not made for ethnic people.
It’s been skewed to white people’s taste and they don’t even realize it. Like white people will eat shitty Caribbean food and be like, “You know what? I don’t think I like oxtail. Oxtail’s kind of gross.” But you didn’t have real oxtail. You don’t even know that you didn’t get the real thing because everything that you touch, conforms to you—that’s a curse. You can’t get real sushi because they’re like, “We have to tailor it to you and put mayonnaise all over it and chives and goofy stuff like that.” So it was realizing white people are also suffering too. They’re getting something bad out of this too. And how can we talk about that? I think all the ideas that we had we were circling this sort of thing and that was just the nice way to tie it together and I think with all the step out episodes, they really focus in on this idea of how white people are cursed—and at the same time, we’re like, let’s just make a fun, interesting story.
They all have a horror element to them.
Yeah. You called them Black Mirror. In the room we were calling it Blackest Mirror. But the idea of doing the step outs—there was definitely a point where we’re like, “Okay, maybe this is too many. Maybe we can’t do more than two.” Donald was like, “Nah man, if we’re happy with these, we should do it. The season will be tied together by theme.” And I think everybody was like, “Yeah these are the episodes we want to tell standalone. These are the episodes we want to tell with [the cast]. And it felt really good. So we were happy with it by the end.
Was there ever a point where you were coming up with those and for a second you felt like, oh, we’re writing a different anthology show that we should go pitch somewhere else ?
I think we all really like the idea of anthology series and in a way Atlanta was supposed to be an anthology series, but I think we always just had the idea. We would always joke about different episodes where we could just do whatever. There’s a joke in the writers room where we’re just going to do an episode called “Boston.” And it’s just about three white friends who live in Boston. So we’ve always had ideas where we’re like, man, we can just tell whatever stories we want to do. And even “Teddy Perkins,” it’s not a standalone episode, but it’s definitely a little out of the box from the other ones. “B.A.N.” is a little out of the box and we start season two off with other characters. So we’ve always been into that.
So for us, it wasn’t that crazy. [We were more concerned with] are people going to care that much if we do these kinds of episodes? And we were ultimately like, “Nah, that’ll be fine.” Which is funny because now I [see] people were upset by it. People really are like, “I want to see Paper Boi rap.” But by the end of it I think when people look back on this season, they’ll realize, “Oh, I actually really enjoyed this season. Even if I only liked eight out of the 10 episodes or six out of the 10. I really enjoyed the six and the other four, they were okay, but I can still digest them.”
And I think because they’re so episodic also, it’s like if you want to skip episode two, you can do that. You can watch all other nine episodes over again. I think that’s what makes the season special is it’s—also, I think that’s why people will say this is the best season by the end of it.
Really?
It’s because it’s giving everybody something. Even the people who hate our show, I think are like, “I liked this part, I thought that was funny.” You know?
That’s interesting. You think it’s going to go down even better than season 4?
I’ve always thought that season 3 was our magnum opus. This is where we did it all. But it’s funny, Hiro and Donald have always said season 4 is going to be even better. They’re really high on season 4. And I think season 4 is good. Our mantra for that season was just, have more fun. There’s definitely some really good episodes. But season 3 in particular, that’s the season where the writer’s room felt the most… like we’ve really tapped into something here. But I think people will think season 3 is the best season just because it’s got something for everybody. Everybody can enjoy it and come back to it. I think the rewatchability of it will be really easy too, because of how disjointed the episodes can feel.
What do you say to some of the people who have been critical of the step out episodes as focusing too much on the white gaze, when they come to Atlanta for the specificity of Blackness that you guys usually present?
I don’t think that’s necessarily it and I think as the storyteller, there’s also interesting things when you go from a different perspective. Most people might say they don’t want to see the white gaze. But a slavery movie through the eyes of a white person is definitely different from the slavery movie through the eyes of a black person. A lot of these stories like, “The Big Payback,” people say, “Oh, this is through the white gaze.” I saw somebody online said that episode is trying to humanize white people or something or we’re somehow trying to get people to feel sorry for white people.
And I’m like, if you feel sorry for him, that’s fine but I think it’s also just an interesting way to view this story. Here’s this regular white guy whose life seems pretty regular and he’s like, “I never did anything to anybody.” And then we see this story of this thing happen to him. How often have you ever seen that on TV? And I really don’t like when people say we made this for white people. Because, do you think this episode is going to make white people care about reparations more? Or that they’ll be like, “I watched that episode and now I get it”? I’m like, if anything it’s going to make them hate [the idea of] reparations more] if I had to guess. Just because we’re using white characters doesn’t mean it’s not for black people or that black people can’t learn something from it.
And I think that ties into Liam Neeson. They’re mad about it, but just because he’s white and because he said that, doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from him. It doesn’t mean you can’t learn and I feel like the internet does so much of that now, like cancel culture and all these different things. Where it’s people shutting off valuable information that you can get from somebody who may be your enemy or may not align with you completely. Just because somebody’s a racist doesn’t mean they don’t know how to farm. You can still learn something from someone you have conflict with. I don’t see any of the episodes really through the white gaze at all. I think this season is definitely for black people and through the black gaze.
So, the Liam Neeson thing… him and Chet Hanks. There’s an argument that you guys were enabling them or giving them absolution. But it felt like those cameos were still critical of things they did, but just talking through it.
I think with the Liam Neeson one especially, we felt like it’s easy to be mad at him or to hate him for what he said. And I understand people being upset with him but at the same time, whenever you say racism exists, you have Republicans and white people who are like, “Oh, racism, it’s over. There’s no racism anymore.” And there obviously is. You ask everybody, “Have you ever done something racist?” Everybody will tell you, “No.” If you went up to everybody and were like, “Hey, have you ever done something that could get you canceled, that everyone would hate you for?” Everyone would say, “No.” And that’s a lie. We’re not telling the truth.
So of course people are going to say racism is over. And of course people are going to say systemic racism doesn’t exist. And here’s a guy who did something that, in my opinion, was really brave of being like, “Hey, here’s how I’ve been racist before. It was really bad and I feel bad about it and I’m telling this unprovoked knowing that there’s some people who are going to be really mad at me.” This is kind of like apartheid or even Nazi Germany after the war when they have these trials. People have to come forward and tell the truth about what happened. You can’t ask the Nazis, “Were you guys killing Jews?” They’ll just say “No, actually we didn’t do anything bad. I don’t think we did, there was no racism then.”
That’s what I would hope people would take from it is this idea: yes he said something that may be upsetting and yes, you may never forgive him. That’s up to you. But me personally, I can see the good part of it and I can see why it’s helpful to the Black community to have this white star admit that he’s been racist before and that he can change, that he feels differently now and he feels really bad about it. But of course everything’s so punitive now and no one can be… There is no absolution for anyone, you type something when you’re 17 and it just lives with you for the rest of your life. Donald said something in his Interview magazine feature that perfectly captured it, where he was like, “If Malcolm X were alive today, people would say he tried to rebrand.” If Malcolm X was alive, people would say, “Wait, you dated a white girl when you were 20. Fuck this n-gga, man. Nothing he says means anything anymore.” I’m like, if that’s the case, who are our leaders? Who among us is perfect and the people who are perfect are probably full of shit.
You and your brother obviously hold a lot of weight in Hollywood and getting cameos is one thing, but even still, this year you got some pretty famous people to do some truly insane things on television. Even just approaching Liam Neeson with this idea… how did that go? Chet Hanks is just a crazy wildcard, of course. And Alexander Skarsgard in the finale. Those are not just, we got this person flexes, it’s we got this person wilding out or making fun of themselves.
Yeah, man. It hasn’t been easy for us to get cameos throughout our three seasons. The first two seasons, especially. We got the Migos in season 1, which was funny because the Migos were one of the only people who came through for us that season. In true rapper fashion, they were like six hours late to set but I appreciate them. We tried to get Stacy Dash in the “Juneteenth” episode. She kind of played us. Then in season 2 we were able to get Katt [Williams] which of course everybody loved. Michael Vick too. And so we have been like Moneyball in a way. “Champagne Papi,” we were supposed to have Drake in it. We were talking to him about it and he flaked at the last minute.
So it’s like, we’ll never be able to get Drake but there’s a bunch of great Black actors and just great people who maybe we can get because other people don’t see the value in what they’re doing or what they can be. So let’s see if we could convince them to come on here and do a really good job. And I think Katt’s performance really opened people’s eyes—he won an Emmy for it. So for season 3, maybe we’re at the peak of our powers. Let’s just try and get whoever we like, whoever we want. If we want this person let’s shoot for it and like Liam Neeson, there was no backup plan for that. There wasn’t anybody else. If he said no, it wasn’t going to be good.
And at first he was a No. But we were able to talk to him and he ended up eventually being cool with it. I remember when we finished that scene, Hiro was like, “Oh my God. I feel so much better now.” Because there was no plan B. With season 3, we aimed really big. This was our maximalist season, our Graduation Kanye album season. So we were like, let’s swing really big and hopefully we’ll get the things we want, but it’s always a dice role trying to get big stars. And we never really wanted to be a show that relied on that either.
Yeah. Not like Entourage or something.
Yeah, exactly.
I screamed during the funeral scene at the Chet Hanks reveal.
Chet Hanks, he’s the perfect person to play that character. This idea of this rich white kid who’s had a Caribbean nanny, who imprinted so much on him that now he’s half Caribbean. The shorthand is already there for people to understand what’s going on, which is great.
That also speaks to this theme this season where it felt like you guys really… obviously the show had always been referential to a point, but this year it felt like you guys really dived into memes and other viral internet moments and wove them in.
I look at some of the standalone stories like Bible stories—or even, “Three Slaps” is a fairy tale—and I think to make them more digestible, it’s good to have the shorthand in there already or to add some of those elements. You’re able to bring people in a little bit when we do a lot of stuff that’s really deep and that you can really dive into and think about.
And that’s the point of a lot of these things, is to create this mirror where you reflect on how you feel about these things. But I also think sometimes we don’t have to try and blow the audience’s mind every single time. So let’s just give them a little something to latch onto. And I think the memes are easy for people to wrap their head around. By the time you see the kid in “Three Slaps” dancing in his chair, chanting Black Panther, you’re like, I’ve seen this already. I get that feeling.
There’s just a lot of things that are stickier in this season… I think also too, people’s attention spans aren’t as great as they used to be and people miss stuff or people are on their phone when they’re watching TV. So sometimes it’s just a good thing to break people out of that to be like, “Oh yeah, I know what this is.” Or to get them back focused on what’s happening. So it’s referential to a lot of these memes and things. But I think we’re also speaking to the culture as well. So it was important to speak their language a little bit. There are a lot of these episodes which deal with black culture and the culture we live in now. And it was like, why not talk in the language that they get? Not everything needs to be something that’s way over people’s heads.
Episode nine with Kevin Samuels and George Wallace might be my favorite of the season. What were the ideas you guys were trying to wrestle with in that one and what were some of the reference points? I saw you joke about the last scene being Luka Doncic.
I think with that episode, it’s funny because we all just were like this episode is hilarious and it’s going to be great. A, it’s just a fun episode, whether you care about what’s going on in it or not. But for us, it’s just talking about the idea of what is Blackness or what does it mean to be Black? I think as a Black person, like every Black person has felt not Black enough before. And if you’ve never had that feeling, you’re also probably a terrible person. Nothing that solidifies your Blackness is usually good. It’s not like, “Oh, he went to Howard and got straight A’s and that’s why everybody knows he is Black.”
It’s like, “No, something bad.” Like we talk about how Blackness is rooted in trauma. So Black people in America might be like, “Oh, this Black person in England, he’s not really Black because he’s never been shot at before. Because they don’t have guns there. And he doesn’t know what it’s like to have police pull them over the same way. So he doesn’t really get it. And he doesn’t have slavery, so therefore he’s not really Black.” And it’s these ideas of what does it mean to be Black? So it’s funny to have his old Black man choosing what he thinks is Black. And of course these old Black men’s references for Blackness are old and outdated. They only make sense to them. So it’s this funny idea of your college tuition riding on the whims of this crazy eccentric Black billionaire—who originally we wanted to be Steve Harvey.
Oh my God.
But he ended up flaking on us. I think he had to do African Family Feud or something like that. So here’s Kevin Samuels, another Black man who cracks me up. What did crack me up about Kevin Samuels, that I loved, was that his references were so old. If you ever see a Kevin Samuels video, he’s like, “Women today, they’re not like Dorothy Dandridge or Diahann Carroll.” I’m like, who the fuck are these people? His idea of Blackness is very old, because he’s a 57 year old Black man.
Who decides what’s Black? Who’s Black enough? It’s a hard thing to understand. Should an Asian kid be able to pass this test? Or is it just about your parents? And I think from the beginning, when you come in and meet Aaron, you don’t like him from the first scene. Then you realize he’s black. Then you realize his dilemma and then you see him get screwed over and you enjoy it. But then you have to ask the question of like, “Would I be Black enough? Would I get that scholarship?.
This African kid at the end, he didn’t get it until he got shot. Is that what being Black is, you have to get shot in order to get it? I had the thought the other day, I was like, man, Blackness should be tied to how much you help Black people in general or open doors for the next Black person. That’s how we should judge people’s blackness, based on that. If Rachel Dolezal is helping a bunch of Black people get scholarships and building homes in the Black community, I’m like, she can be Black, let her be Black. Who cares at that point, because she’s helping, right? But there’s so many negative things that we tie to Blackness and I’m like, is that helpful?
The people that many Black people might say are sellouts or coons… some of these people are really smart and can be helpful to the cause. Like if you were going to just dismiss Malcolm X because he dated a white woman when he was 20, you’re going to miss out on a great leader. You’re going to miss out on these skills that people have that are once in a lifetime type things. Everybody has superpowers, and if you’re just going to cut off these people, is it helping you? So yeah, that episode, it’s fun and it’s a good time, but that’s the bigger idea behind it.
The finale has that post-credit stinger with the white Earnest that we’ve been seeing all season and you even do the push-in on his picture like the end of The Shining. What’s the significance of having the white Earn, and what are you guys trying to say with that double there?
It’s just the idea of how we’re connected. I think Black people and white people are connected. There’s this idea that we’re living in two separate worlds and it doesn’t affect anybody. Here’s a white guy named Earnest and here’s a black guy named Earnest. And we’ve seen the white Earnest go through a journey through this season. And it’s been tragic and dark. And at the same time, here’s Earn at the end, getting [white Earn’s] stuff in a nice setting—there’s balance in the universe, we’re tied together. I was listening to this podcast the other day and it was talking about how in the city of Atlanta last year there were 192 murders or something like that. And only two of them were white people.
Only Black people have been getting murdered in Atlanta. And he was talking about how there’s two Atlantas, there’s a white Atlanta and there’s a Black Atlanta, experience-wise. And yeah, as a white person, you can be… for example, I hate South Carolina. But I imagine white people go to Charleston and they’re like, “This is a great time and it’s historical and we get to hang out on plantations.” So there’s this idea that we’re living in two separate worlds, but I think the last scene brings home this idea of that, no we’re tied together more than you think. There’s a balance happening here between us and you can’t escape it. We’re tied together, whether you like it or not. And this guy who’s met this demise has balanced out where Earn is going in a way.
Did you guys feel pressure to—especially taking so many big swings this season with the step outs and not being in Atlanta for most of it—did you feel pressure to make a finale that tied the themes together in a more pronounced way? Because ending with just Van is certainly a choice that most people aren’t going to be expecting, but it seems like you were unconcerned with maybe having to put a bow on things the same way do with season 2, like you were saying.
I’ll give the credit to Hiro for that. Because that wasn’t the last episode originally, I think “Rich Wigga” was the last episode originally. But Hiro’s always really good at knowing how to tie stories together through visuals and just how to make things feel right. He does a good job of that. So with season 3, we knew we wanted “Three Slaps” to be first but we changed the middle order of the episodes. And then towards the end we were like, how do we [end] this?
So it was Hiro realizing the idea of Van saying, “Let’s go home, back to Atlanta,” is a really nice way to sum up everything and close the loop of the season. I think we had toyed with another two episodes being the last two, but I think this one feels the best and it’ll just, it’ll lead people on the right note, heading into season 4.
What note is that?
Season 3 is the maximalist season, it’s all this big stuff. The big cameos, we’re in a different country seeing all this crazy stuff. And then it’s like, all right, let’s go home to Atlanta now. Let’s see what that’s like again. Let’s go back to where we feel comfortable, or where we’re supposed to feel comfortable, anyway. I think that after seeing everything you see in the season finale it’s like, all right, let’s go back to like the jail scene in Atlanta. It’s a funny thing. But I think for the writers, that’s a feeling we all already understand because we have been so many places and seen so much now. And most of us are from Atlanta or from black cities. So it’s this idea that you saw the world and your mind was expanded drastically. And now it’s time to come back [home].
Now that Paper Boi is a little bit more famous, the gang’s getting into some money, it almost feels like… I watch an episode like “The Old man and the Tree,” and it feels like something that you and Donald probably experienced in real life to some degree. Like you’re pulling from your own weird experiences in these weird spaces your celebrity is opening up to you now.
Yeah we actually did go to a party in Brazil at this guy’s house and he had a gigantic tree in his yard. And he was like, “This is one of the oldest trees in Brazil.” And it’s just built into his house, in this courtyard, this giant tree. And he was really proud of it and happy. And we were like, man, this is what having money is. The things that you care about are so strange. I’m like, here’s this city with huge inequality happening right outside the door. This guy is probably scared of being kidnapped anytime he leaves out of here. And the thing he cares about is history, this old, old tree, that’s what he’s… He built a whole house around this giant old tree.
And yeah, it’s just a weird thing as a Black person to be like, “Oh, you care about history? That’s strange.” So yeah, there’s definitely some real elements from our lives baked into that. But Atlanta’s always been that. I think it’s always talked about the way that we felt as we’ve moved on in our lives and the idea of what it is to be Black people who have grown up in Atlanta, but also have seen a ton of the world, and what that feels like.
So looking ahead to season 4, is it going to retain like a lot of the surrealism flourishes, or would you say you guys put most of that into season 3?
Season 4 is definitely going to have the surrealism. I think our show has always had that every season. It’ll feel different from season 3, for sure. With each season we try and make it feel a little different in any way that we can. Coming back to Atlanta, I think there’s going to be a special feeling for season [3]. That’ll make it feel special from the first two.
Is the plan still for it to come back at the end of this year?
Right now it’s like the end of September or October. So it won’t be too long of a wait
Do you guys feel like it’s wrong for people to think of what you guys do on the show, this season in particular, as trolling? Or are you trolling both your critics, and what people expect from TV? Or is it just way more genuine than some people take it for?
Yeah, we’re not trolling. Trolling to me sounds like somebody who’s just trying to get a rise out of people for no apparent reason. Someone who just enjoys being provocative or messing with people. That’s not really what we do. I think our thing is just, like I said before, we don’t want to give people what they want all the time. We understand that people don’t know what they want necessarily. They’ll say they want things, but they don’t. Eventually they’ll be like, actually that sucks.
So the idea of the customer is always right, it’s like… not really. Maybe if you’re trying to make money and you’re like, “Whatever, just give him whatever he wants and charge him.” But at a real nice restaurant, they don’t give you salt and pepper shakers. They’re like, there’s enough salt on here. There’s enough pepper. It came with the sauce it’s supposed to have. There’s no ketchup on the table. But I think now we live in a time where everybody’s buttons are being pushed. Everybody feels like everything is provocative or has some sort of agenda to it.
I think if anything, our agenda is like, we’re going to do what we like, and what we think is interesting, and what we think is important or fun to talk about. And we’re going to give our honest perspective on it. And if that makes people upset, then fine. That’s good. Not to shit on Ted Lasso, which I’ve never seen. But, yeah, we don’t want to be Ted Lasso. From what I hear about Ted Lasso, it’s a very heartwarming, good show that everybody feels great about. And that’s great. But for us, these episodes should make people talk—not online either, like in real life.
I think “The Big Payback,” if it made you and your friends talk about reparations, or if “Rich Wigga” made you talk about this Black tribunal, and what it means to be Black, that’s great. And some of those conversations are going to have friction in them. And people are going to be mad about things. But I’m sure people don’t come out of Ted Lasso like, “Man, I’m ready to fight somebody about Ted Lasso.” Which, that’s the show they made, and it’s great. And people enjoy it, but, that’s not what we want to do. We want our art to be, not confrontational, but it should be something where people debate it and discuss it. It should be a discussion.
So what’s next for you guys? The final season’s already in the bag. You guys are working on Mr. And Mrs. Smith now, is that correct?
Yeah, we’re working on Mr. And Mrs. Smith. We also have another show called Swarm that I’m actually down here in Atlanta shooting. That’s about a black serial killer, that one’s going to be fun. We got some great actors for that. And I have a bunch of movie ideas that I’m really into. There’s a movie called Soul City that I’m working on that I think will be really good when it’s done. And Donald’s got some movie ideas, so really we want to make movies. We have TV shows going, of course. There’s a pilot that me and Swank are working on. But I really want to make a movie. I know that movies are in a weird space right now. It’s a weird time for the movie industry.
You guys are definitely building a real empire together. Or as Donald would call it, Death Row.
Exactly. The thing that people should understand is that we are competitive. The Atlanta writers room, we’re competitive, Donald’s competitive, I’m competitive. So we want to make the best thing. On one hand you can’t care because you’re an artist, but at the same time, we’re also battling the other artists out there. You know? We’re trying to give people the best thing. And I think if you realize that you’ll be excited for the sort of stuff we’re coming up with.