Donald Glover Talks to GQ About His Time Playing Lando Calrissian, Meeting Billy Dee Williams, and Lando’s Preference for Robot Loving
*This was transcribed from a video clip, so it has been paraphrased for clarity and brevity
Donald Glover recently opened up to GQ about playing the young Lando Calrissian. He quickly points out how his friends harassed him about Lando’s “interesting” relationship with his droid. We might never know the truth, but Glover thinks that Lando “getting it on” with a droid is definitely a “possibility”.
Glover also compared Star Wars to Star Trek, confirming that Star Trek already had an African-American character in Lt. Nyota Uhura, played by the amazing Nichelle Nichols. “But with Lando, for some reason, people feel like this is a real black person in space!”
Glover goes on to talk about how his first introduction to Lando Calrissian was through his dad:
“I remember my Dad showing me Star Wars and being like yo, this is Lando! And he’s, you know, he feels “pulpy”. The rest of those other… you know, the whole Skywalker family, you can’t really f*ck with the canon. You can have a “pulpy” kind of like sh*tty Lando novel that feels like outside the Star Wars universe but still in it. I think that’s why people like him. He’s the most elastic of the characters because you don’t know where he’s from or who he is. There’s only really those three little books, so yeah, like I was, man, that was dope to play him. It was fun.”
On meeting Billy Dee Williams for the first time:
“I met Billy Dee right before I played him. I remember that day really well. We met at Little Dom’s, and he was just a funny guy, and we talked about a bunch of other stuff like I wanted to know what did you feel like – all that kind of stuff. And I wanted to really get into (it) cause I really didn’t want to let anybody down. And I remember he was talking about, “Oh, you’ve been to Hawaii? I got married in Hawaii”. He had all of these great stories. But I kept being like, Yes, Sir um, sir, what do I do to play (Lando), and he literally goes “Just be charming”. He was like, “Just be charming, that’s pretty much it. That’s the secret”. And I was like, “Okay.” I guess he’s right, like Lando’s charm incarnate, which, you know, he’s kind of a maverick which I don’t think there’s a lot of anymore. It’s hard to be like the “smooth talker” nowadays. But I think that’s also where the danger is. It’s like how close can you get without tripping over it?”
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Glover also talked about possibly playing Lando Calrissian again, and hinted at something already being in the works:
“I would love to play Lando again. It’s a fun time to be him. It just has to be the right way to do it. I’m all about, like, now it’s like, you know, time is precious. I think everybody’s, like, you know, the past couple of years when the pandemic hit – really had people experience time in a way where they’re like, “I should be around oranges”. People kind of realize their time is valuable, you know? You only get so much, so I’m not interested in doing anything that’s just gonna be a waste of my time or just a paycheck. I’d much rather, you know, spend time with people that I enjoy. So it just has to be the right thing. Which I think it could be; I mean, Lando’s definitely somebody I’d like to hang out with. So yeah, I mean, we’re talking about it. That’s as much as I can say without Kathleen Kennedy hunting me down.”
It’s interesting that Glover mentions the Lando show is still being discussed. Hopefully, we’ll get more information on this at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023 this week.
Meet Julie Gray, a passionate pop culture writer from Aotearoa, New Zealand. A lifelong Star Wars fan, her love for the franchise runs deep, with Luke Skywalker being her all-time favourite character and Anakin Skywalker coming in as a close second. Her outlook on the Star Wars universe is simple yet powerful - "All Star Wars is good Star Wars", a true testament to her undying love for this iconic franchise.
