My dream dinner party

You know that classic ice breaker question, “If you could invite five celebrities to a dinner party, who would it be and why?” If you were to ask me right now, three of the five answers to that question would be Donald Glover, Issa Rae and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Well, thanks to The Hollywood Reporter, I now know what a conversation between these three looks like. La La Land director Damien Chazelle would not have made my dinner party list but since I’ve already decided I’m going to love La La Land because I’ve never met a musical I didn’t like, I’m OK with him crashing the party.

THR explains their reason for putting Donald, Issa, Lin-Manuel and Damien together is that they are, “four of the most heralded breakout talents of 2016.” Accurate. Even though some of us have been fans well before this year, each of these four is having a really good professional year. Leading the interview is veteran director Jon Favreau. I could do without Favreau jumping in to mansplain sh-t every two minutes in this conversation but it’s cute how much he knows about Donald Glover. Favreau admits that his 15-year-old son has a Childish Gambino poster on his bedroom door and directs more questions at Glover than at anyone else.

It’s a long, mostly fascinating discussion about creativity and how YouTube changed the game, especially for Donald and Issa, who were both creating online content before every millennial with a webcam became a YouTuber but I’ll focus on the highlights:

Lin-Manuel Miranda sheds some light into his role in the live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid. LMM is a massive Little Mermaid fan (I will never understand this. Ariel is THE WORST) and named his son Sebastian in part because of the movie.

“I just have my hat on as the No. 1 fan of that movie. I'm the head of the don't f-ck it up committee.”

Speaking of not f-cking things up that have a beloved fan base, Glover talked about playing Lando Calrissian (!!!) in the Star Wars Han Solo prequel.

“I remember Lando really well. He was like the only black guy in space. And he was the cool one. I just realized, he still has to be cool. And cool is an interesting thing. It changes… Cool changes depending on the perspective. Also, it's fun because [the Han Solo movie is set] before [Empire Strikes Back], so he's still figuring it out a little bit, which is fun.”

Glover also reveals that Lando was the first action figure he ever owned and probably because I cry at everything or because I’m still on a Star Wars high from seeing Rogue One last night, I actually teared up at this. It’s a big deal that little boys are now going to be playing with Donald’s own action figure and that they now have more than one “black guy in space” to choose from.

For the Insecure fans, Issa touched on how people are reacting to – SPOILER ALERT – the fact that her character cheats on her HOT AF boyfriend Lawrence.

“We had a big storyline where a character cheats. Now, I could put up a picture of my grandma and [people online will say], "You f-cking cheater!"

If this was the dinner party of my dreams, I would have laughed really hard at that anecdote.

You can watch the full conversation here.