Donald Glover reveals he got married during the making of Mr and Mrs Smith

Actor told The Independent that the process of making his new spy rom-com made him more optimistic about marriage

Donald Glover has revealed that he married his long-term girlfriend during the making of Mr and Mrs Smith.

Rumours have long surrounded the actor’s relationship status with his partner of eight years, Michelle White, with fans speculating as to whether the couple are married.

Glover, 40, and White, 34, were first spotted together in January 2016 on vacation in Hawaii. They welcomed their first child, Legend, later that year, and have since had two more sons: Drake and Donald.

In a new interview with The Independent, Glover revealed that he and White tied the knot while he was making the recently released Prime Video series Mr and Mrs Smith – partly because of the show itself.

Created by Glover and TV writer Francesca Sloane, the new eight-episode comedy is a loose remake of the 2005 spy romcom of the same name, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Glover and PEN15 creator Maya Erskine, 36, play the titular married spies whose fake relationship gives rise to real feelings against a backdrop of deadly and hilarious scenarios.

Asked whether the show’s realistically romantic portrayal of marriage made the actors more optimistic about the institution, Glover responded: “Yeah I do, actually.”

Donald Glover and Michelle White (Getty Images)

“We both got married to our partners, respectively,” said Erskine. “Donald got married during the show and I got married right after the show, so definitely it had an impact on us.”

Erskine recently married her husband, the actor Michael Angarano, after announcing their engagement in 2020.

Glover, who is famously protective of his private life, added: “I love marriage because I never had rose-coloured glasses about it. My dad was always like, ‘Oh, marriage is really hard work.’”

He continued: “It was never like, ‘Oh you’re supposed to be happy all the time.’”

The news will come as a surprise to many of Glover’s fans given his past comments about marriage.

In 2018, he told The New Yorker that he is “not the marrying kind”. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter the year before, Glover said that although he believes in love, he doesn’t believe in marriage.

“It doesn’t serve the purpose that I would want it to serve,” the Emmy-winner and Grammy-winning musician told the publication at the time.

Elsewhere in the interview with The Independent, Glover opened up about his relationship with his children.

“My kids are the best thing ever,” he said. “I just miss them all the time and I think everything that they’re into is so cool. They make me feel wanted and like I have a real purpose here.”

Mr and Mrs Smith has received positive reviews from critics, with The Independent’s Nick Hilton praising the show’s “intimacy” in his five-star review.

“Despite a relatively chaste tone, Mr & Mrs Smith manages to be one of the sexiest shows on TV,” writes Hilton. “And somehow, even with all the balaclavas and firearms and computer hacking, one of the most truthful ones.”

Mr and Mrs Smith is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.