“There’s a lot more in season four,” he clarifies when telling VIBE about Earn’s character arc.
MARCH 19: Donald Glover attends the premiere of “Atlanta” during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at The Paramount Theatre on March 19, 2022 in Austin, Texas.
Rich Fury/Getty Images for SXSW
The Emmy Award-winning comedy Atlanta led and created by Donald Glover is set to return to the air on March 24. On Saturday (March 19), during the show’s premiere screening at South By Southwest 2022, Glover and the additional cast and crew shared details on what audiences can expect from the series after a multi-year hiatus.
Glover was joined on the red carpet by executive producers and writers Stephen Glover and Stefani Robinson, executive producer and director Hiro Muria, and co-star Zazie Beetz. Together, the collective addressed the press regarding details about both the upcoming season and the fourth installment that’s set to end the show’s run.
MARCH 19: (L-R) Zazie Beetz, Stefani Robinson, Donald Glover, Hiro Murai and Stephen Glover attends the premiere of “Atlanta” during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at The Paramount Theatre on March 19, 2022 in Austin, Texas.
Rich Fury/Getty Images for SXSW
“I’ma be honest,” Glover said to VIBE when asked about what he’s excited for fans to see as his character Earn develops this season. “There’s a lot more in season four. I think season three is more about Van than Earn.”
Beetz added, “I don’t want to give anything away. I think it’s a very honest season. I think all of the characters are sort of out of their element, which allows things to rise to the surface that you would otherwise be able to, in [both] habits and in comfort, suppress. Here, you can’t because you have nothing to catch you. I think it’s a lot of truth, and I think reflections of where we’re all at as ourselves and as people.”
ATLANTA, from left: Donald Glover, Zazie Beetz, ‘Money Bag Shawty’, (Season 2, ep. 203, aired March 15, 2018).
Guy D’Alema/ ©FX / courtesy Everett Collection
As the show comes to a close, VIBE questioned the Atlanta crew on which character would make an interesting spinoff. They agreed and did not name one of the main four roles.
“The guy that gets shot in season one,” expressed Robinson as she and the rest of the talent laughed in agreement. “We actually have an episode we wrote about that guy,” Donald Glover added. “Jaden Smith was supposed to be in it, and we never did it because Jaden Smith was busy. We were supposed to release it online to just read, which we still could do. Stephen wrote it, it’s really good. But, that guy was cool.”
ATLANTA, l-r: Keith Standfield, Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry in ‘The Big Bang’ (Season 1, Episode 1, aired September 6, 2016).
Guy D’Alema/©FX/courtesy Everett Collection
Atlanta’s four-year hiatus was initially due to cast scheduling conflicts and was pushed back even further after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. On the red carpet, the writers and cast shared that although the show was shot during the pandemic, it is the same concept they created back in 2019.
“I want to make this clear: We wrote this before the pandemic,” Glover explained. “There’s a bunch of s**t in there that’s going to seem like we [wrote it] while the pandemic was happening.”
He continued, “We’re prophetic, That’s what I’m saying… The world’s actually very predictable. Things work in cycles. So, we really made sure not to address COVID in a specific way because I hope that the show outlives all that s**t… I don’t want to hear Shakespeare talking about the Black Plague, what’s happening right now just ripped from the headlines. That s**t’s bulls**t to me. It felt more classical to just leave it in that world. But, we do speak about a lot of stuff that’s happening. We did it in 2019, I want to make that very clear.”
“There are a lot of anti-vax Easter eggs,” Stephen Glover added as everyone laughed.
Watch the trailer for Atlanta season 3 below.
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