Donald Glover

[Guest Nicole]

Emmy Award winner Donald Glover thanks “the great algorithm” instead of God during his acceptance speech.

Glover, a former Jehovah’s witness, won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for his show “Atlanta.”

Glover, the first black person to win in that category, began his acceptance speech for the award by declaring:

Man. Yo, first I want to thank the great algorithm that put us all hereÂ…

Glover went on to win a second award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series for “Atlanta” as well.

In a 2015 interview with The Daily Beast, Glover discussed the difficulty of growing up as a  Jehovah’s Witness. The following is an excerpt:

TDB: Back to the religion thing, because it does play a large role in the film, I read that you were raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. What was that experience like?

Glover: Being a Jehovah’s Witness was interesting. I think it amplified my own alienness. I was always the odd one out, and Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas, you don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, and when you have Jewish kids in the class who don’t celebrate Christmas everyone understands, but when you say you’re a Jehovah’s Witness they say, “So… You come to my door at 9 a.m. and wake my family up? I don’t understand any of your rules.” As a kid growing up in the South, people didn’t know what it was. It gave me a very different perception of what religion is because in the South, everyone is Southern Baptist. Jehovah’s Witnesses are Christian, but it felt small and almost cult-like in Atlanta.

TDB: Did the constraints of being a Jehovah’s Witness push you to be more creative and artistic? Sometimes constraints can make you find fascinating workarounds—like movies in the ’40s and ’50s under the Hays Code.

Glover: I believe it made me see the world differently. Part of the religion is teaching you that the world is an evil place, so trying to reconcile really liking stuff in the world but also being told it’s bad makes you want to figure out, “What is this?” and “Why am I being drawn to this?” My creative outlet was definitely shaped by being a Jehovah’s Witness.

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2017/09/emmy-winner-donald-glover-thanks-great-algorithm-instead-god/#USAJL8ZYyDQPYjY4.99

 

 

 

[Jack Ryan]

Donald Glover talks a bit about growing up JW in his latest interview with the New Yorker