Donald Glover may be a familiar face to many, owing to his starring role in beloved shows and movies like Community, Atlanta, and Guava Island as well as his illustrious musical career. However, one of the major creatively collaborative forces behind many of his endeavors is his own brother, Stephen Glover.
Now that the news is out that Donald and Stephen will be bringing a Lando spinoff series in the Star Wars universe to life, let’s break down just who Stephen is.
Stephen, the younger brother of Donald, also goes by the name of Steve G. Lover. Like Donald, he is also a musician, a rapper whose tunes you can hear in the show Atlanta. The breakthrough self-titled track of Brian Tyree Henry’s “Paper Boi” featured in the pilot episode is actually performed by Stephen, as GQ noted.
Stephen is part of a creative collective known as Royalty that backs many of Donald’s creative endeavors, including Atlanta and the latter’s real-life rapper career under his stage name Childish Gambino. For instance, Stephen wrote the one-hour musical movie starring Donald and featuring many Childish Gambino tracks called Guava Island, per Rolling Stone.
As one of Atlanta’s lead writers — having penned half of the episodes of the show’s first season by himself — Stephen has picked up three Emmy nominations over the years. That’s a pretty impressive glow-up when you consider Stephen once didn’t have showbusiness ambitions whatsoever.
Before joining his brother out west in Hollywood, Stephen set his sights on chemical engineering, an academic field he studied at Georgia Tech for a few years, according to The Hollywood Reporter. However, the college life did not pan out for him and he took up irregular work in fits and starts in Atlanta thereafter. One of those odd jobs included being an airport pitchman for credit cards, which later inspired a subplot for Donald’s Atlanta character, Earn.
After Stephen (who is also an executive producer of Atlanta) joined Donald in his creative endeavors in 2012, it brought a number of opportunities, including being the writing force — alongside his brother — for the upcoming Lando. With Donald presumably in the starring role as the roguish pal of Han Solo, in a reprisal of his 2018 role from Solo: A Star Wars Story, we can imagine the series will be a familiar setup for creativity to flourish for the siblings. Suffice it to say, we look forward to Stephen’s work in Lando and beyond.