Donald Glover explains why Phoebe Waller-Bridge exited Mr & Mrs Smith as co-star
Donald Glover has finally spoken at length about why Phoebe Waller-Bridge exited Mr & Mrs Smith.
The Fleabag star was originally set to co-star with Glover in the newly-released Prime Video series, though left the project in 2021 – reported at the time over creative differences.
Waller-Bridge was eventually replaced in the co-lead role by Maya Erskine, and Glover has now opened up more in-depth about the departure, comparing it to a "divorce" in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
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"You’re like, 'Oh shit, this should have worked'," he said. "And this is just me, being honest, but I think a good relationship is one where you don’t waver from the extremely uncomfortable.
"And I don’t know if we were ever going to get to a place where we could be completely brutal to each other."
Reflecting further, Glover said: "It might’ve just been cultural. You’ve got to think, Fleabag was written entirely by her, they don’t really do writers rooms in the UK.
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"And I look back at Atlanta, and we built a culture where we could say mean things to each other or be like, 'That idea is kind of [crap]', and then we’d laugh. You weren’t afraid to say something – but we also had the right to roast you. It’s just how we got the laughs."
The star suggested that he and Waller-Bridge never felt "comfortable enough with each other", adding: "And that’s okay. That’s what happens when you’re two captains. It’s like: 'This is how I run my ship.' 'Well, this is how I run my ship.'
"And it’s such a big idea, this show, I don’t think it can have two captains. I mean, she rewrote the pilot, and I saw her script and I was like, 'It’s definitely not my style', but if she’d done it with her in it, we’d all be like, 'This is a great f**king show'."
Asked how the split went down, Glover revealed: "It’s like a real divorce where the hardest part is knowing when to say it’s over. Like, when do you quit? Because you want to be cool, like, 'Oh it’s over, that’s fine'.
"But we both put a lot of work into it. We both were working really hard. So, who gets to keep the cat? (Laughs.) But I’d brought [co-creator Francesca Sloane] in, and also, I feel like Phoebe wasn’t fully in love with the thing.
"But I feel really good about the fact that if the thing was feeling more like hers and she was like, 'I just love this', I would have been like, 'You should have it'."
Mr & Mrs Smith is available to stream on Prime Video.
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