Donald Glover on Why "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" didn't Work w/ Phoebe Waller-Bridge

[JamesG]

Donald Glover Explains why "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" didn't Work with Phoebe Waller-Bridge
by Sydney Bucksbaum
February 7, 2024


Donald Glover created and stars in the Prime Video reimagining of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's 2005 movie of the same name, and "Fleabag’s" Phoebe Waller-Bridge was originally supposed to co-write and star opposite him as the titular married spies after the pair worked together on Solo: A Star Wars Film.

But due to creative differences, Waller-Bridge exited the project and Maya Erskine (Pen15) took over her role as Jane Smith. Now, a week after the full season debuted, Glover is finally explaining why the series didn't work with Waller-Bridge.




"I think because we were friends and I really liked Phoebe and we’d worked together ... it’s a divorce in a weird way," Glover told The Hollywood Reporter.

"You’re like, 'Oh s---, this should have worked.' 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."




Glover noted that it "might’ve just been cultural," due to Waller-Bridge's U.K. background and the fact that "Fleabag was written entirely by her, they don’t really do writers rooms in the U.K." He remembered how on his previous show, "Atlanta", he had "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," Glover added. "It’s just how we got the laughs ... I don’t think [Waller-Bridge and I] ever felt comfortable enough with each other."




He went on to explain how that's okay because "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,'" he said.

"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 ****ing show.'"




As for how Waller-Bridge ultimately left the show, Glover repeated that it was "like a real divorce where the hardest part is knowing when to say it’s over."

"Like, when do you quit?" he added. "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?" He laughed before continuing and explaining that he had brought co-creator Francesca Sloane on, and he also felt "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.'"




When Erskine joined the series just as an actor (and not a writer or showrunner), Glover tells EW that he "just laid more into Maya" while changing the character to fit her better.

"We just asked Maya a lot more," Glover said. "We came up with a lot of things on set and improved things on set. The big thing was playing to Maya’s strengths. And I had a learning curve of her work because I only really knew her from Pen15, which is a very obviously different character — she’s playing a child — so I had to do some research on what is Maya really like? And we had to do a lot of fighting and that kind of stuff, so I think we just tailored it to what makes Maya Maya, and I think she really shined because of that."

But Erskine told The Hollywood Reporter she could still tell what had carried over from the Waller-Bridge era of the show. "There were some lines that were left that I could just feel were Phoebe," Erskine said. "I’d be like, 'Oh, I love this line. This feels like Phoebe.'" And Glover confirmed, "It was so crazy, Fran would always be like, 'She’s right. That was Phoebe’s line.'"

https://ew.com/donald-glover-explain...-smith-8563989