Donald Glover says he originally pitched a conventional story for Atlanta, but "I was Trojan-horsing FX"

The A.V. Club

“I knew what FX wanted from me,” Glover says in a New Yorker profile. “They were thinking it’d be me and Craig Robinson horse-tailing around, and it’ll be kind of like Community, and it’ll be on for a long time. I was Trojan-horsing FX. If I told them what I really wanted to do, it wouldn’t have gotten made.” His brother and Atlanta collaborator, Stephen Glover, adds: “Donald promised, ‘Earn and Al work together to make it in the rough music industry. Al got famous for shooting someone and now he’s trying to deal with fame, and I’ll have a new song for him every week. Darius will be the funny one, and the gang’s going to be all together.’ That was the Trojan horse.”

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