That didn’t take long. Last night, after exactly two episodes and one Ayn Rand reference, Donald Glover’s black Republican was kicked off Girls. (Read our recap here.) Put more specifically, he was written off the show after a mortifying breakup fight seemingly designed to answer the many criticisms surrounding Girls and its lack of racial diversity. When Vulture spoke to Lena Dunham a few weeks ago, she told us that Glover was cast before the public outcry (“why would you not want to kiss him on TV?â€) but that he felt like the right actor to address certain issues. Here are a few more breakup-related thoughts from Dunham:
Much of the final breakup scene was improvised.
“There was a script but we just went HAM on the script; I mean, we went crazy. The script was the basic arc of that conversation, and the improv was my weird Missy Elliot rap lyric and the moment where Donald goes on his diatribe and he’s like, “I’m gonna get a fixed gear bike and I’m gonna date a black guy!†All that stuff. Donald raps a lot about his relationship to being like a hipster black guy and the fact that he’s been in like a very white comedy scene and a very white like indie music scene — he has that lyric about being the only black guy at the Sufjan Stevens show — so he had a lot to say on the topic.â€
Donald Glover wasn’t cast “as a reaction to anyone.â€
“We cast Donald because of a love of his work. But having such a conscientious person with so many particular opinions on the topic, it seemed only correct that we should play around together on that.â€
That fight isn’t really about black Republicans at all.
“Hannah acts like she has a political issue with him, but what she actually has an issue with is him disliking what she does. Because she feels like she should receive universal praise, and the fact that someone’s sleeping with her should also mean that they respect her prose style.â€
And yes, Lena Dunham has been there before.
“I’ve had one boyfriend who I knew had an active … not dislike, but some issues with what I did. It wasn’t even like he was like, ‘I think you’re pushing a weird agenda.’ He just didn’t think I was that great a writer. It was right when Tiny Furniture was coming out, and I didn’t love it. It’s important to me to receive constructive criticism and I don’t want to be with a yes man, but I want to be with somebody who at the very baseline level thinks that I’m talented and takes what I do seriously. I couldn’t be attracted to someone if they made work that I found absurd.â€