During the second season of Girls, Donald Glover had a two-episode arc as Sandy, Hannah Horvath’s black Republican boyfriend. At the time, it seemed that Glover’s role was a meant to pacify critics of the show’s whiteness and Hannah’s privilege. His character said as much to Dunham’s during their breakup scene. In a New Yorker profile of Glover ahead of Atlanta’s second season, Dunham and Glover revisited the arc:
When Hannah broke up with him, Sandy began pumping his shoulders to imitate her privileged cluelessness: “‘Oh, I’m a white girl, and I moved to New York and I’m having a great time, and, Oh, I’ve got a fixed-gear bike, and I’m going to date a black guy and we’re going to go to a dangerous part of town.’†Dunham told me that Glover improvised his lines: “Every massive insult of white women was one hundred per cent him. I e-mailed him later to say ‘I hope you feel the part on Girls didn’t tokenize you,’ and his response was really Donald-y and enigmatic: ‘Let’s not think back on mistakes we made in the past, let’s just focus on what lies in front of us.’â€
Dunham has nothing but positive things to say about Glover and Atlanta’s success: “At least 20 people have told me, ‘I’d like to make something like Atlanta.’ And I say, ‘Oh, you mean a show that toggles between painful drama and super-surrealist David Lynch moments to take on race in America?’†she said. “That’s not a genre — that’s Donald.â€