21 Pieces Of Trivia About FX's "Atlanta" That Explain A Lot About The Show
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Coming in at #14 on the BBC's "100 Greatest TV Series of the 21st Century," Atlanta was immediately recognized as a cut above the rest.
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Equal parts surrealism, comedy, horror, drama, and more, the show does not easily fit into one category. As Donald Glover puts it, "I'm not making a TV show, I am making an experience." To better understand and appreciate Atlanta, I'm taking a closer look at the brilliant people behind it.
1.Paper Boi's song of the same name was performed by Stephen Glover, Donald's brother.
2.Donald Glover was careful to pitch a "safe" version of the show to FX so that he could experiment with the weird stuff down the line.
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This "Trojan Horse" maneuver is common in the entertainment industry. After all, studio executives are making an investment with their money, and everyone likes a safe bet. Glover has compared the show to many other movies and TV programs, such as "Curb Your Enthusiasm with rappers" or "if David Lynch or the Coen brothers made a show about hip-hop culture."
The influence of these other shows and filmmakers are obvious, but from Season One Atlanta has been in a league of its own. It was Glover's plan from the start to sell the show as something familiar before establishing his (and his team's) unique style.
He told Vulture: "I just Trojan Horsed it. I told FX the show was something it wasn’t until we got there and then hoped it would be enjoyable."
3.Paper Boi's order for Lemon Pepper Wet wings become so popular that the real-life restaurant changed their menu to include it.
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Residents of Atlanta will already know this, but for anyone passing through you've got to stop at two places: American Deli and J.R. Crickets. Donald and Stephen Glover based the Lemon Pepper Wet off of wings at American Deli but chose to set the scene at J.R. Crickets.
J.R. Crickets doesn't sell Lemon Pepper Wet in real life, though they did use to sell "Fester" wings, which was the same combination of ingredients. But the order became so popular after the episode came out that they officially changed the name to Lemon Pepper Wet. Try the wings at both American Deli and J.R. Crickets to see what you think.
4.Donald Glover didn't want to play Paper Boi, an up-and-coming rapper, because audiences already knew him as a successful artist.
He told Stephen Colbert, "That would have been wack to me. [...] I don’t think anybody wants to see a show of someone actually making it."
Naturally, Glover's experiences as Childish Gambino have impacted Atlanta. Glover goes on to tell Colbert:
"Being a rapper is super awkward. You’re in a video and you've got, like, champagne and butts close to your face, and then you have go to Whole Foods and the person is like, 'Hey, you’re that dude!' and you’re like, ‘Please I really want to buy this ice cream.'"
5.Donald and Stephen Glover have compared the differences in each season's tone to the differences in Ye's albums.
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Stephen Glover told Rolling Stone that he and his brother Donald often use Ye's albums as comparisons for the show's growth:
"We’ve kind of been comparing the season to a sophomore record from a new artist. Internally, we’ve drawn Kanye parallels: if the first season is College Dropout, this one is Late Registration."
Speaking about what exactly made the second season of the show similar to Late Registration, Donald Glover said at an Emmys panel: "This is probably our most accessible but also the realest — an honest version of it — and I feel like the most enjoyable."
6.Brian Tyree Henry didn't study other rappers when creating the persona of Paper Boi because he wanted to start with Alfred.
"I wanted to be so far removed from [studying other rappers] because I think that every rapper, even their names are ways that they want you to know them. Rappers make personas or names. I felt like it was a way of protection, you know what I mean? So, I didn’t really want to study any rappers per se because I wanted to get to know who [Alfred] really was and where he came from before I could even go to where he was going. Like, Paper Boi is where he’s going." —Brian Tyree Henry, NPR
7.Donald Glover had to bring in what Black creators call a "white translator" to argue the case that Atlanta should be able to use the N-word freely.
Initially, FX was only going to allow Atlanta to say the word if another character immediately commented on how it should not be said. But Glover didn't agree, so he brought in Paul Simms, a white executive known to some as the "white translator."
Kenya Barris, creator of the show Black-ish, describes what people like Simms do:
"You need the translator for the three-minute call after the meeting. It’s for when the execs call the white guy to say, ‘What exactly did Kenya mean there?’ and to be reassured."
"I’m Black, making a very Black show," Glover told The New Yorker, "and they’re telling me I can’t use the N-word. Only in a world run by white people would that happen."
8.While Zazie Beetz is proud of her character Van, she does not want her to be viewed as a generalization of every single Black woman.
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Beetz told GQ, "I think it is important to see intelligent Black women who are also struggling with their partners. You know what I mean? That’s all part of this larger narrative of what’s going on in the media and in film and television in general. But her story isn’t everybody’s story. I don’t want executives in studios to be like, 'Oh, we have to do more exactly like Van.'"
9.The cover art for Childish Gambino's Awaken, My Love! was shown in the Season One episode, "Juneteenth," two months before the album was released.
10.If the show's disorientation ever makes you feel high, that's intentional.
"We do everything high. The effortless chaos of Atlanta — the moments of enlightenment followed by an abrupt return to reality — is definitely shaped by weed. When shit is actually going on, no one knows what the fuck is happening." — Donald Glover to The New York Times
11.Donald and Stephen Glover write all of Paper Boi's raps.
12.Hiro Murai, who's directed 20 of the show's (so far) 31 episodes, also directed the "This Is America" music video.
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Murai has made a lot of incredible things with Glover, including the music videos for "Sober" and "Telegraph Ave." He also directed Guava Island, a film starring Glover and Rihanna. Murai's most recent project was the limited series Station Eleven
13.If you didn't already know that it was Donald Glover who played the incredibly creepy Teddy Perkins, now you know. Allegedly, he stayed in character between takes and even fooled LaKeith Stanfield into thinking he was a different person.
Stanfield was the only person who didn't know Glover was playing Perkins. When he tried talking to "Teddy Perkins" off-camera, Glover was ready with a prepared life story for Stanfield.
14.Studio executives did not understand the casual, baby-parents relationship between Van and Earn.
Glover says, "At FX, they didn't get Earn and Van at all. I said, 'This is every one of my aunts — you have a kid with a guy, he's around, you're still attracted to him.' Poor people can’t afford to go to therapy."
15.The opening episode of Season Three, "Three Slaps," is based on the true story of the Hart family.
It's a heartbreaking event that shows what can happen when foster children fall through the cracks, people assume a smiling family is a happy one, and children aren't listened to soon enough.
At the end of "Three Slaps," though, the Atlanta team doesn't write what really happened to the Hart family. They instead give Loquareeous—the young boy who represents Devonte Hart (holding the "Free Hugs" sign in the picture above) — and the other foster kids a way out.
16.Seasons Three and Four were written and filmed at the same time.
17.The show's production typically flies under the radar, but Donald Glover shared some pictures of the cozy writer's room back in January.
18.Donald Glover wanted to end the show after Season Two.
19.To Stephen Glover, Season Three is about "the curse of whiteness."
"Season Three is about curses and the curse of whiteness. I can't remember the guy's name on CNN, but he had that speech where he talks about white people freeing themselves from the curse of racism, and we talked about that in the writers' room a lot. And I think you'll see that in a lot of the episodes, this idea. When you are from the South and you are American especially, you can see things differently. And I think white people have blind spots, obviously, to race and things that are going on, and they are affected by this, too. It's not just Black people who are going through it and having a hard time. It's, like, you are actually affected by it, too." —Stephen Glover to Laughing Place
20.The show might not have filmed in Paris if not for a nifty little tax rebate.
The tax rebate on international production (TRIP) has brought a lot of non-French filmmakers to France. It is a 30–40% tax rebate, depending on things like how much the production spends and even how many visual effects shots they have.
Xavier Roy, line producer for the Paris episode, stated that, "Without this measure, Atlanta probably would not have come to Paris. Or maybe just for two days for the outdoor shoots. They would have filmed the indoor scenes at their own studio, at their production base in London."
21.Season Four will be the last.
Sorry to end it on a downer, but at least they're going out as one of the best shows in history!
