Actor and musician Donald Glover has revealed the reason he abruptly cancelled his tour last year: after being told by a doctor he'd suffered a stroke.
In a widely-shared speech to the audience at a festival in Los Angeles this past weekend, Glover recalled visiting a hospital after experiencing "really bad pain" ahead of a show in Louisiana last year. Glover continued to perform, though sought medical advice after.
Doctors then discovered a hole in his heart, Glover said. "The doctor was like, 'You had a stroke.'"
Last year, Glover told fans he was scrapping the remainder of his Childish Gambino 2024 tour after being hospitalized and requiring time to heal following surgery, without going into further detail.
Now, Glover has said he felt like he had let down fans, despite needing multiple operations to fix his heart issues.
"I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana and I did the show anyway," Glover told the audience at Camp Flog Gnaw festival on Saturday evening. "I couldn't really see well, so when we went to Houston, I went to the hospital and the doctor was like, 'You had a stroke.'
"And the first thing I thought was like, 'Oh, here I am still copying Jamie Foxx'," Glover quipped, referencing the actor's similar experience with a stroke in 2023. "That's really like the second thing. The first thing was like, 'I'm letting everybody down.' I know it's not true.
"I'd broken my foot," Glover continued, "and they found a hole in my heart. So, I had this surgery, and then I had to have another surgery. They say everybody has two lives, and the second life starts when you realize you have one. You got one life, guys."
Famous for his acting roles in Community, Atlanta, and in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Glover has kept a low profile this year while focusing on his ongoing recovery. A Community movie have long been in the offing, though little more has been said recently of any concrete plans. Lucasfilm has also said it expects Glover to return for a long-awaited Lando Calrissian project, though nothing has been heard of that in years.
Image credit: Katie Flores/Billboard via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
source https://www.ign.com/articles/they-found-a-hole-in-my-heart-donald-glover-reveals-stroke-diagnosis