Donald Glover finally reveals why Phoebe Waller-Bridge exited ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’: It was a ‘real divorce’

“Mr. & Mrs. Smith” star Donald Glover is spilling the tea over why Phoebe Waller-Bridge exited the Prime Video series, based on the 2005 movie starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Waller-Bridge, 38, was replaced by “Pen15” star Maya Erskine in the eight-episode show, which premiered Feb. 2.

“I think because we were friends and I really liked Phoebe and we’d worked together … it’s a divorce in a weird way,” Glover, 40, told The Hollywood Reporter.

“You’re like, ‘Oh s–t, this should have worked.’ And this is just me, being honest, but I think a good relationship is one where you don’t waver from the extremely uncomfortable. And I don’t know if we were ever going to get to a place where we could be completely brutal to each other.”

Glover created the “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” adaptation with “Fleabag” star Waller-Bridge signing on as a co-writer and co-star in the series, which follows two married spies, John and Jane Smith. The pair worked together on “Solo: A Star Wars Film” and everything seemed good-to-go.

But Waller-Bridge left the show in September 2021 over a “creative different vision” than Glover’s plans for the series.

Glover told THR that those creative differences “might’ve just been cultural,” since Waller-Bridge is from the UK, where television production can be a bit different than in the US.

“‘Fleabag’ was written entirely by her; they don’t really do writers rooms in the UK,” he said, unlike his FX series, “Atlanta,” where, in the writers room, he “built a culture where we could say mean things to each other or be like, ‘That idea is kind of [crap],’ and then we’d laugh.”

Glover won two Emmys in 2017 for “Atlanta” for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series.

“You weren’t afraid to say something — but we also had the right to roast you,” Glover said about the show’s atmosphere. “It’s just how we got the laughs … I don’t think [Waller-Bridge and I] ever felt comfortable enough with each other.”

Glover added that the series having “two captains” initially was also part of the problem.

“It’s like, ‘This is how I run my ship.’ ‘Well, this is how I run my ship,’” he said. “And it’s such a big idea, this show, I don’t think it can have two captains. I mean, she rewrote the pilot, and I saw her script and I was like, ‘It’s definitely not my style,’ but if she’d done it with her in it, we’d all be like, ‘This is a great f—ing show.’”

Glover said that Waller-Bridge’s departure from “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” felt “like a real divorce where the hardest part is knowing when to say it’s over.

“Like, when do you quit? Because you want to be cool, like, ‘Oh it’s over, that’s fine.’ But we both put a lot of work into it. We both were working really hard. So, who gets to keep the cat?”

Glover added that he brought co-creator Francesca Sloane onto the project and that Waller-Bridge “wasn’t fully in love with the thing. But I feel really good about the fact that if the thing was feeling more like hers and she was like, ‘I just love this,’ I would have been like, ‘You should have it.’”

Erskine was hired just to act on the series, which made life easier on the set — but Erskine told THR that she still felt the presence of Waller-Bridge while shooting the series.

“There were some lines that were left that I could just feel were Phoebe,” Erskine said. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, I love this line. This feels like Phoebe.’”

“It was so crazy,” Glover added. “Fran [Sloan] would always be like, ‘She’s right. That was Phoebe’s line.’”

“Mr. & Mrs. Smith” guest stars include Alexander Skarsgard, Sharon Horgan, Paul Dano, John Turturro, Sarah Paulson and Parker Posey, among many others.