PASADENA, California — Donald Glover doesn't want to sugarcoat anything with his new show, Atlanta.

As a young man trying to break his cousin (Keith Stanfield) into the music business, Glover's character navigates the world of the Atlanta rap scene — but not exactly seamlessly. Without giving too much away, there are stumbles. Big ones.

But Glover is going for something a little more grounded in the dark side of the day-to-day with his new FX series. The result is, as he puts it, sort of the opposite of what's achieved by Master of None, the Netflix show from fellow comedy ensemble player-turned-leading man Aziz Ansari.

"I feel like the important thing with this show is to make it personal," he told reporters Saturday after a panel for his show at the Television Critics Association press tour. "I'm not an optimistic guy. I feel like you watch Master of None and it's a very optimistic look at millennialism, [but] I'm pessimistic about it. I feel like we kind of fucked up."

You could say that Atlanta is sort of the Master of None from the darkest timeline.

From the first episode, the show leans into difficult subjects without striking a Very Special Episode vibe. Particularly some characters' use the n-word in the pilot came up during the panel — a move Glover defended, especially in light of the point that's made in its use. (The scene in question featured Glover's character encountering a white DJ who uses the word, but he later learns his acquaintance doesn't use it in front of his station's black janitor.)

"That's how people talk," Glover said during the Atlanta TCA panel. "Trying to pretend people don't talk like that, it's kind of silly."

The casual use of such a charged word speaks to some of the facets of everyday life that Glover hopes Atlanta captures. "Most of the time when I hear a white person say it, I still gotta work with them. I don't have the power to be like, 'You can't say that,'" he explained.

Just don't mistake the edginess of Atlanta wielding the n-word in its first episode as a bid for unearned respectability. Glover simply wants to avoid the traps of network television.

"It's hard to be real on television," he said. "You're constantly being kind of taken out of television. From there being an emblem at the bottom telling you you're watching television or a rating in the corner or people not being able to say 'n*gger.'"

Glover hopes Atlanta can capture life's realness without drawing the dreaded "it's important" label.

"I'd much rather make something funny before important, or real before important," he said. "Whatever we would talk about in the writer's room, I'd just be like, 'Yeah, let's write about that because that seems to be bothering all of us a little bit.'"

With reporting by Sandra Gonzalez.