Donald Glover Gives Most Lowkey New Dad Announcement Ever: ‘You Know, I Had (a Kid) During the Coronavirus’

In a conversation with I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel, Atlanta creator Donald Glover revealed that he had his third son during the pandemic.

The revelation came organically, as Coel and Glover chatted about his 4-year-old son, Legend, during a talk recently published by GQ.

“He’s very grown up now,” Glover observed, before adding, “You know, I had [a kid] during the coronavirus.”

This spring was a turbulent time for many, and especially so for parents welcoming children into a world where so much was in flux. But the timing was even stranger for Glover: not only was his son born just hours before he watched the George Floyd video for the first time, but his thoughts also turned to his father, who died in late 2018.

“It was such a weird moment,” Glover told Coel. “It was such an intense, weird moment, because I’m watching that video and it’s like eight minutes long, so you’re sitting there and I had just had this amazing, joyful, expanding moment, plus my dad had passed away recently, so (my son) was named after my father… I don’t even know what, really, the word is to describe it. It was just expanding: the empathy and compassion and the terror and the joy of it.”

“Oh, God,” said Coel. “And then having the future in your hands!”

“Having the future in your hands!” Glover responded. “And then having to explain to him—the one who was just in here [Legend]—‘Why are people angry? Why are people marching?’ ‘Well, you look like this…’ It’s just heavy.”

The two multihyphenate stars have shared comparisons to each other because of their critically acclaimed and surreal work, as well as for the broad range of talents they bring to their projects (Glover directs, writes, produces, and acts in Atlanta, as does Coel in her shows). But the two also bonded over their thoughts on family: Coel revealed that she hadn’t thought much about having children of her own, but was open to adoption or freezing her eggs, in case she changes her mind.

Glover said that he had considered getting a vasectomy to “just freeze those assets.” But he’s also open to expanding his family with longtime partner Michelle White.

“Adopting kids…we actually have been talking about [it], because we have three boys so I’m like, ‘Oh, it might be nice to get a girl in there.’ So I think all those are great options.”

“But,” he cautioned, “it is hard.”