“I actually watched him a lot”.
In a recent interview reflecting on his career to date, Donald Glover reveals that he watched ‘a lot’ of Robbie Williams ahead of shooting the iconic music video for his hit song ‘This is America’.
Released by Glover under his musical stage name Childish Gambino, the video for ‘This is America’ features the actor and musician energetically dancing while committing acts of violence and as chaos erupts around him. Acclaimed by critics upon release in 2018 for its visceral nature and its commentary on systemic racism and gun violence in the US, the promo has been viewed 875 million times to date.
In a recent GQ video breaking down his most famous roles so far, Glover discussed ‘This is America’, explaining that the track began as a diss record towards Drake. He said:
“The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America’, that was all we had, that line.
“And it started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like: ‘This shit sounds kind of hard, though.’ So, I was like: ‘Let me play with it’.”
Glover then opens up about the inspirations for the music video itself, stating that he and its director Hiro Murai studied the promo for Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ as preparation. This was before he cited Robbie Williams, saying he researched the English singer-songwriter when working on his dance moves for the clip.
The actor and musician said:
“You know who I did a lot of research on that people don’t probably think I did, but I actually watched his moves a lot to make sure I didn’t do the exact same thing – Robbie Williams.
“I actually watched him a lot. I saw him get a lot of hate.”
That was pretty much all Glover said on the matter, although the rapper’s comments have led some to wonder if he was referring to the music video to Williams’ hit song ‘Rock DJ’.
‘Rock DJ’s’ video – which features Williams trying to impress a female DJ by dancing and stripping naked, eventually resorting to removing his skin and muscles and ending up as a skeleton – was controversial upon release. However, though the promo’s ending was cut by most music channels around Europe for its violent content, it wound up winning British Video of the Year at the 2001 Brit Awards.
A link to the age-restricted ‘Rock DJ’ clip can be found below.
Related articles:
- JOE’s Succession Power Rankings: Connor’s Wedding
- The best action movie trailer of all time has been released
- Jack Black on the biggest reason actors do animated movies
- Nicolas Cage is exactly what you imagine him to be like, says his co-star
- A sequel to this Russell Crowe cult classic could be on the way
- Keanu Reeves set to team up with Jonah Hill for new comedy movie
- QUIZ: Can you ace this ultimate sports movie quiz?
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
