Donald Glover revealed he suffered a stroke last year during a concert tour as his musical alter ego Childish Gambino.
“I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana and I did the show anyway,” Glover, 42, told a concert crowd during a Nov. 22 performance at the musical festival Camp Flog Gnaw, per videos shared on social media.
After the tour moved to Houston, he said he went to a hospital.
“The doctor was like, ‘You had a stroke,’” he said.
“The first thing I thought was like, ‘Oh, here I am still copying Jamie Foxx,’” he joked, referring to the stroke the “Ray” star suffered in April 2023 that left him hospitalized for weeks.
“That’s really like the second thing. The first thing was like, ‘I’m letting everybody down,’” Glover continued.
He said doctors went on to find “a hole in my heart,” leading to him having two surgeries.
He then reflected on what his health scare has taught him while speaking with the crowd.
“They say everybody has two lives and the second life starts when you realize you have one. You’ve got one life, guys and I gotta be honest. The life I’ve lived with you guys has been such a blessing. I love seeing and performing for you guys,” he said. “As my wife says, which I love, she says, if this life is a flavor, soon as I’m done give me another scoop.”
“You should be living your life how you want because it can only get better,” Glover concluded. “If we have to do this again, it can only get better.”
Glover’s health update comes a little more than a year after he announced on Oct. 4, 2024, that he was canceling the remainder of Childish Gambino’s “New World Tour” because of health issues.
The musician and actor revealed on X at the time that he had been hospitalized after dealing with an unspecified illness after a concert in New Orleans.
“As of now,” he wrote, “I have surgery scheduled and I need time out to heal.”
