Donald Glover has been announced as the voice actor for Yoshi in the upcoming The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – but how much do you know about him?
With new trailers coming out, the anticipation for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is ramping up ahead of it debuting in theaters on April 1.
Building on the success of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie, the new film sees more adventures for Mario and Luigi, and sees a whole new batch of fan favourite characters making their debut, from Bowser Jr to Rosalina and, of course, Yoshi.
The little green dinosaur has been a favourite character in Mario games for decades, so fans were overjoyed to see the character introduced in the new movie. It has also just been announced that Yoshi has a star actor behind his voice – Donald Glover.
But how much do you know about Donald Glover? Here are some fun facts that you might not know.
A Lando action figure was an early toy
Donald was born into a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, so commercial toys were not part of the household. However, Donald’s father made an exception for an action figure of Lando Calrissian from the Star Wars films, as he was an empowering black character.
Little did Donald know that when he grew up, he would go on to play Lando in the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018.
Tina Fey gave Donald his big break
Donald came relatively late to showbusiness and began his career as a scriptwriter after graduating from university. Age 23, he came to the attention of producer David Miner after sending spec script samples through – including one for The Simpsons. Miner was impressed, and showed his work to Tina Fey, and they decided to hire him to write on the sitcom 30 Rock.
Donald worked as a writer on 30 Rock from 2006-9 and also made occasional appearances on-screen in the show. He, along with the rest of the writing team, won a Writer’s Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Series in 2008.
Donald inspired the look for Miles Morales
Donald became a more recognised figure after he joined the cast of the sitcom Community in 2009 as Troy Barnes. The year after, there was a viral social media campaign to get Donald cast as Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man. While the role went to Andrew Garfield, the campaign did not go unnoticed.
Before the viral campaign, Brian Michael Bendis was already developing an African-American version of Spider-Man, Miles Morales. He later credited Donald for influencing the look of Miles.
Donald went on to voice Miles in the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man.
His rap name came from an internet generator
Donald has also had huge success over the years as a rapper under the name Childish Gambino. The odd name is said to have come from an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator – a website that would generate a person’s Wu-Tang name, poking gentle fun at some of the names that the rap collective have taken.
He’s had a stroke
In 2025, Donald revealed that the previous year he had suffered a stroke. He was on tour as Childish Gambino, but had abrupted cancelled part of it, but didn’t offer much insight into why apart from health issues.
It was the next year before he opened up as to why – he had suffered a stroke. He was in Louisiana and, despite a bad headache, completed the show there. When his vision was affected, Donald went to hospital where the doctor informed him that he had had a stroke. At the same time, doctors also found a hole in his heart, which required two surgeries. But, thankfully, he has now recovered and back on stage and writing again.
