Donald Glover wears a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona

In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Donald Glover and Maya Erskine sit on a park bench over a soft pretzel, two strangers a nameless agency has paired off, issued the cover identities John and Jane Smith, and ordered to live as a married couple. Glover created the 2024 series with Francesca Sloane and plays John across its eight episodes, where the marriage gets as much screen time as the spy work. The show also makes John a watch guy, and not by accident. The costume designer, Madeline Weeks, a former GQ fashion director, gave him a rotation that costs a fortune and stays quiet about it: an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, a Patek Philippe Nautilus, a run of Rolex sport models. By her account the rule was pieces that are "crazy expensive, but not flashy, no diamonds or anything like that," and then the harder part, "each Rolex that he wears, you can't even get those watches."

The Cosmograph Daytona is that line made literal. The current steel Daytona sits behind dealer waiting lists that run for years, so its price card is mostly hypothetical. John's is older. The watch press that catalogued the show's pieces placed his as the steel-bezel Daytona that Rolex discontinued in 2016, the reference 116520, a 40mm steel chronograph that left the catalog around twelve thousand dollars and now trades on the secondary market in the low twenties and up. The only way to buy a discontinued Daytona is from someone who already owns one.

That makes it a strange watch to give this particular man. The agency assigns John his name, his apartment, even the wife beside him on the bench, all of it standard issue and revocable. The watch is the one item on him no employer could requisition and no budget could rush, because a security clearance does not move a Rolex waiting list.