Donald Glover Opens Up About Why Phoebe Waller-Bridge Exited Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Mr. & Mrs. Smith playing the titular married spies. But before Erskine took on the role of Jane Smith, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was set to star as well as co-create the series with Glover and Waller-Bridge ended up exiting the project in 2021. Now, Glover is opening up about the exit, calling it an “amicable split” that he likened to a “real divorce” stemming from the pair having fundamentally different creative visions for the series.

“You’re like, ‘Oh sh-t, 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,” Glover told The Hollywood Reporter (via TVLine). “And I don’t know if we were ever going to get to a place where we could be completely brutal to each other.”

Glover went on to explain that there could have been something of a cultural clash, citing that in the UK “they don’t really do writers rooms” and that Waller-Bridge wrote Fleabag entirely herself while Glover built a writers room and a culture for Atlanta. Glover says he doesn’t think that the two of them ever reached a place where they were comfortable roasting one another as part of the process.

“I don’t think we ever felt comfortable enough with each other,” Glover said. “And that’s okay. That’s what happens when you’re two captains. It’s like, ‘This is how I run my ship. ‘Well, this is how I run my ship.’ And it’s such a big idea, this show, I don’t think it can have two captains. I mean, she rewrote the pilot, and I saw her script and I was like, ‘It’s definitely not my style,’ but if she’d done it with her in it, we’d all be like, ‘This is a great f-cking show.’”

He further likened the situation to being like a real divorce, saying “The hardest part is knowing when to say it’s over. Like, when do you quit? Because you want to be cool, like, ‘Oh it’s over, that’s fine,’ But we both put a lot of work into it. We both were working really hard. So, who gets to keep the cat? But I’d brought [Sloane] in, and also, I feel like Phoebe wasn’t fully in love with the thing. But I feel really good about the fact that if the thing was feeling more like hers and she was like, ‘I just love this,’ I would have been like, ‘You should have it.’”

What is Mr. & Mrs. Smith About?

A new take on the 2005 Mr. & Mrs. Smith film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, “In this version, two lonely strangers land jobs working for a mysterious spy agency that offers them a glorious life of espionage, wealth, world travel, and a dream brownstone in Manhattan. The catch? New identities in an arranged marriage as Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Smith. Now hitched, John and Jane navigate a high-risk mission every week while also facing a new relationship milestone. Their complex cover story becomes even more complicated when they catch real feelings for each other. What’s riskier: espionage or marriage?”

Along with Glover and Erskine, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Parker Posey (Lost in Space), Wagner Moura (Narcos), Michaela Cole (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), John Turturro (Severance), Paul Dano (The Batman), Alexander Skarsgård (Succession), Eiza González (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare), Sarah Paulson (American Crime Story), Sharon Horgan (Shining Vale), Ron Perlman (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts), Billy Campbell (The Killing) and Ùrsula Corberó (Snake Eyes).

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is now streaming on Prime Video.