Donald Glover Is Playing Lena Dunham's Republican Boyfriend on 'Girls'
So this is how Girls is going to deal with race. And politics. But mostly race. Tim Goodman's review of the show in The Hollywood Reporter this morning explains that Community star Donald Glover plays "a handsome black Republican named Sandy" dating Lena Dunham's protagonist.
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Last year's news that Glover, who also raps under the name Childish Gambino, would appear on the second season of the HBO show, which debuts January 13, appeared to indicate that Dunham — in addition to casting a popular, young actor with a fan base that complements her own — was responding to criticism over the first season's treatment of race. From Goodman's review it seems that Dunham, for whatever reason, is going straight for some of the topics she was taken to task over during the first season's run. Goodman explains in his review that the second season "does a fantastic job of skewering hipsters and frauds – many of the things that detractors hated about the show." Dunham's character appears very much aware of race issues this time around:
When Sandy calls out Hannah’s knowledge of race and its ramifications, she goes on a self-righteous, defensive rant, and Sandy says, "You just said a Missy Elliot lyric." There are attacks on fixie bikes, rich white girls dating black men, gay iPad-using DJs, what constitutes a "pretty person’s job," and the smug cynicism of youthful people who haven’t earned the right to it.
We're also interested to see how Sandy's Republicanism fits in, since — for a show that has generated a lot of political discussion — the characters Girls world have remained fairly apolitical.
