Donald Glover Recalls Tina Fey Telling Him He Was a 'Diversity Hire' on '30 Rock'

It was his first writing job.

Although now he is known as an extremely talented multi-hyphenate, Donald Glover dealt with intense imposter syndrome when he was starting out.

In a new interview with GQ, Glover revealed what it was like when he got his first job as a writer for 30 Rock, claiming that the creator of the hit comedy series, Tina Fey, told him that his hiring was a "diversity thing."

He said, "There is no animosity between us or anything like that, but [Tina Fey] said it herself…. It was a diversity thing. The last two people who were fighting for the job were me and Kenya Barris."

Barris is the creator of Black-ish and its spin-offs, as well as BlackAF. Like Glover, he is also a multi-hyphenate, acting, writing, producing, and directing as well.

Glover said of the hiring decision, "I didn’t know it was between me and him until later. He hit me one day and he was like, ‘I hated you for years!’”

He suffered from imposter syndrome at the time for many reasons, despite people like Tracy Morgan saying of Glover's talent, "When I first read his writing during 30 Rock, I was like, ‘He’s got it.' The things he wrote for me made me very funny. He got me nominated…twice!”

The 39-year-old said about his first writing job, "It definitely didn’t feel like I was supposed to be there. I used to have stress dreams every night where I was doing cartwheels on the top of a New York skyscraper with the other writers watching me.”

Glover previously mentioned his hiring at 30 Rock being for diversity in a profile for The New Yorker.

In response to Glover inquiring over whether he was hired because of his race, Fey reportedly said, "The answer was in large part yes; she admired Glover’s talent but hired him because funds from NBC’s Diversity Initiative ‘made him free.’”

Despite the reason behind Glover's hiring, the Community alum has proven himself to be one of Hollywood's brightest stars.

Glover created, wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the award-winning TV series Atlanta, co-created the new series Swarm, which is getting a lot of love from critics, and he's an icon in the music industry under the name Childish Gambino–and that's just to name a few of his many accomplishments.