Donald Glover is finally sharing the reason why he was forced to cancel his headlining tour as Childish Gambino, The New World Tour, last year after only 18 performances.
The tour, with supporting act Willow Smith, was scheduled to go from August 11, 2024 until February 11, 2025. However, after the 42-year-old actor and rapper's show on September 7, he announced he would be taking a step away to deal with some health issues.
That October, Donald confirmed he had to unfortunately cancel the rest of the tour due to needing surgery and "time out to heal." However, while playing Tyler, The Creator's Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival on Saturday, November 22, the "This is America" rapper shared what really happened at the time.
"I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana, and I did the show anyway," he first explained, per NME. "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.'"
Donald joked that his first thought was "Oh, here I am still copying Jamie Foxx," who'd suffered a debilitating stroke himself in 2023. He then thought, "I'm letting everybody down." That wasn't the end of his medical saga, however.
As time went on, the Community star realized that he had even more ailments to deal with, requiring further surgeries that kept him firmly away from the stage for months. "I broke my foot, they found a hole in my heart," he revealed, with the latter referred to as either patent foramen ovale (PFO), an atrial septal defect (ASD), or a ventricular septal defect (VSD). A PFO can sometimes act as a contributing factor for a stroke in young adults.
Per NYU Langone, the average age of strokes in America has gradually decreased due to a variety of the same factors that also contribute to heart disease. According to Brandon Giglio, an MD at NYU Langone: "That's why the average age of stroke is decreasing in America; we're developing risk factors at a younger age."
"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," the musician continued. "You should be living your life how you want. If we have to do this again, it can only get better." And as it turns out, his two lives are finally beginning to intersect.
The New World Tour supported the 2024 album Bando Stone & the New World, which Donald revealed would be his final album under the Childish Gambino moniker, explaining that he wanted to spend more time focusing on his commitments to film and TV, plus his family.
Donald is currently in the middle of production for the upcoming second season of Mr. & Mrs. Smith opposite Maya Erskine, which he created, produced and stars in. The first season was released on Amazon Prime Video in February 2024 to critical acclaim, earning multiple nods at the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Golden Globes. He is also working on a companion film to Bando Stone & the New World.