Donald Glover Explains 'Divorce' from First Mr. & Mrs. Smith Leading Lady Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Glover said fear of being "completely brutal" during the creative process led to them going their separate ways on the project

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine portray a married couple in the new Amazon Prime espionage television thriller Mr. & Mrs. Smith — but that wasn’t always the case!

Before the PEN15 creator, 36, was cast as Glover’s leading lady, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was cast in the part.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Glover, 40, explained why the Fleabag star was replaced.

When asked why he felt that he and Waller-Bridge, 38, wouldn't seamlessly fit together as co-creators and co-stars of the show, he cited their very good friendship.

“I think because we were friends and I really liked Phoebe,” Glover said.

“It’s a divorce in a weird way," he continued. "You’re like, ‘Oh s---, this should have worked.’ And this is just me, being honest, but I think a good relationship is one where you don’t waver from the extremely uncomfortable. And I don’t know if we were ever going to get to a place where we could be completely brutal to each other.”

The former Community star compared working on Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Waller-Bridge to working with other creators on his FX comedy-drama series Atlanta.

“I don’t know. It might’ve just been cultural,” he said. “You’ve got to think, Fleabag was written entirely by her, the -

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y don’t really do writers rooms in the U.K. And I look back at Atlanta, and we built a culture where we could say mean things to each other or be like, ‘That idea is kind of crap,’ and then we’d laugh. You weren’t afraid to say something — but we also had the right to roast you. It’s just how we got the laughs.”

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Glover felt he could never see himself being brutally honest with Waller-Bridge in a way that he had been with others. 

Earlier in the interview, he and Erskine agreed that she was never asked to write for the series when she signed on for the project, only act. 

For her, the lesser load was fine because “I had just gotten off years of that with PEN15.”

Glover did note that his split with Waller-Bridge was tough because “we both put a lot of work into it.”

“We both were working really hard. So, who gets to keep the cat?” he quipped, before saying he would have let her have the project if she genuinely loved it more than he did.

Amazon Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith is based on the 2005 film of the same name, which starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as the leads. In the new series, Glover and Erskine play married assassins working for a mysterious spy agency.

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