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SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for all episodes of “Swarm” on Amazon Prime Video.
Rumors of a Donald Glover project centered around a “Beyoncé-like character” have been circulating in Hollywood for at least two years. And while no one will say Knowles’ name — despite Glover calling out the Beyhive and co-creator and showrunner Janine Nabers speaking of “a certain pop star from Houston” — that series is finally here.
In “Swarm,” Dominique Fishback plays Dre, an emotionally stunted superfan of a singer named Ni’Jah (Nirine S. Brown) who is a bit unhealthily obsessed with her own sister, Marissa (Chloe Bailey). When a fight between the sisters keeps them apart for the night, Dre goes out to celebrate Ni’Jah’s surprise album (clearly inspired by “Lemonade,” which features Beyoncé singing about being cheated on), while Marissa discovers she’s dating her betrayed boyfriend, Khalid (Damson Idris). Unable to ask Dre for assistance, she dies by suicide.
After Dre is mysteriously turned away by “the family” from Marissa’s funeral, Dre murders Khalid for betraying Marissa and disrespecting Ni’Jah. (It seems she’s starting to mix the two together.) The rest of the series sees her on a killing spree, mourning the death of Marissa and killing Ni’Jah detractors while desperately hoping to someday meet the star . In the final she finally does it – somehow. After hanging up her serial killer’s hat and adopting a new identity, she spends thousands of dollars that should go towards renting Ni’Jah tickets. This angers her friend Rashida (Kiersey Clemons), who hates Ni’Jah, and Dre suffers another nervous breakdown. She murders Rashida and burns the body, then realizes she burned the tickets too, so she goes to the concert and stabs a scalper to get his tickets. Dre makes it to the front row and then manages to hop onto the stage. When security rushes in to arrest her, Ni’Jah stops them and hugs Dre – but it’s Marissa’s face that Dre sees.
Nabers spoke to Variety about how she and Glover came up with Dre and all the bodies buried along the way.
Donald Glover and you talked about how the idea of “Swarm” came about and imagined what it would be like if the serial killer subgenre centered on a black man woman instead of white. What did you originally envision when creating the character of Dre?
The terminology we used was “alien”. This woman is a stranger in her own world. If you watch the pilot when she comes to Khalid’s house, there are aliens on TV. To the right. That’s a consistent line with her throughout the series. We really took inspiration from The Piano Teacher. Donald introduced me to this film and it blew me away. It’s about a woman who, on the surface, has a very ordinary way of life, and then when you peel off the layers of her complicated psychology, you discover a completely different kind of person that feels very alien. But being from Houston and Donald from Atlanta, we wanted to filter it through a southern black female perspective. It’s a bit like a sister “Atlanta” if you look at the quirky family relationships.
In the penultimate episode, which is set like a true crime documentary, it is revealed that Dre was in foster care before being adopted into Marissa’s family and sent back again because of her violent behavior. We don’t get any details on how she got into the system or what it was like for her. Have you ever imagined more of her backstory?
The “Atlanta”-style documentary episode felt a bit like a step outside where you can intellectualize what you saw — the care system and this notion that black women fall through the cracks — from a personal perspective . Everyone who is Black and is from the South has some type of experience with the foster care system, whether it’s friends who have dealt with it or family who have had it. It’s a very real thing. Donald grew up with that perspective. I grew up with this perspective.
But we really focused on not really seeing her trauma. You can intellectualize trauma, but we didn’t want to dramatize what it was like before we are introduced to Dre, which is what led to her becoming who she is. That’s what I think a lot of black storytelling can lean on, but we really just wanted to let people fill in their own gaps in the story. There’s a mystery as to how she got to where she was, and that’s okay. It’s okay not to know everything.
Speaking of how races work on the show, I’m curious about the white characters. When Dre goes dancing to the new Ni’Jah album, she loses her virginity to a guy at the club. why is he white
I originally saw him as black. There is an actor on the show [Byron Bowers] that I originally wanted for this role, and I suggested that to Donald, and Donald said, “We could do that, or we could use him as this other character that feels like he’s leaning more toward a white guy, and let’s say a white guy in this role that feels like he’s turning to a black guy.” Our character in Episode 3 was written as white, and we’re undermining that a bit too. It’s really smart and funny because you wouldn’t see someone like her lose her virginity to a white guy. And you’ve never seen a black man talk about an eating disorder.
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What about the character played by Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson’s daughter? Hailey presents as white but calls herself black because she has a black grandparent? Was this role written for Paris or was it added later?
Carmen Cuba, our casting director, was fantastic. She suggested Paris Jackson and we all happily fell out. We said: “Exactly. That’s what we’re talking about.”
Paris was great. She’s a pro. She came in and asked the right questions. I’m Jewish, she identifies as Jewish, so we became friends about it. And she trusted us. She said, “I understand what this role is, and that’s how I’m going to approach it.” She really just has this character of a light-filled biracial woman who’s really keen on letting everyone know about her blackness.
Dre killed Khalid to avenge Marissa, but they also disagreed about Ni’Jah. That makes Hailey’s abusive boyfriend, and later Hailey herself, Dre’s only murders unrelated to Ni’Jah.
This show is an exploration of a character and her unpredictability. We saw the pilot. She has this sister who is in an unhealthy relationship with a man. We’ll see how that plays out. We’re going into Episode 2 and we’re going to see a bit of it too, right? So you think this is a story about a black woman who defends her friends and sisters at all costs. When men stand in the way, they are put down. To the right?
We see her put the boyfriend down, but again you undermine the narrative. You see what she does to Hailey as another way to subvert that narrative a bit and keep the audience on their toes. Wait a minute, what is this show about?
Food plays an interesting role in the show. Dre eats a cake with her hands after killing Khalid and eats pretzels while a customer masturbates in front of her, among other bizarre moments. Where does it come from?
When you look at serial killers throughout history, there’s always an odd staple that they have. Dahmer worked in a chocolate factory and they’re pretty sure he dumped their bodies in the chocolate. The Night Stalker broke into people’s homes and ransacked their refrigerators. We talked a lot about food. What’s a funny way and a weird way and a grotesque way to show your relationship with something that’s passionate? And it could be fun. it was food.
Dominique is such a disciplined actress about what she eats, and she’s just so picky, so she went about it with a lot of thought and energy. It feels really memorable, like something that could really stick in terms of the way people talk about her as a character and her “isms”.
Dre has several strange sexual experiences throughout the show until we see her become Tony and enter into a long-term and relatively normal relationship with Rashida (Kiersey Clemons), who hates Ni’Jah. What did you want to say about Dre’s sexuality?
We knew we wanted to start her off as a virgin. In many horror stories, if the protagonist is female, she is a virgin. So there’s a way to subvert that, “Oh, is that a story of a girl losing her virginity and waking up?” We build that story of her sexuality, and if she loses her virginity, that’s fine. It is what it is. But what actually sparks her sensuality, what actually brings her to life, is that act of violence.
Since this is a limited series, we see Dre go through different iterations of her character. As we get to the finale, she’s as confident as she’s ever been. She is grounded in her own skin. And that had a lot to do with her journey as a killer and her relationship with social media. When you meet her in Episode 7, she’s not on her phone. She doesn’t focus on Ni’Jah. She feels like someone who is in remission. That she lives as Tony very confidently – in a grounded, real way without any labels – is part of it. This relationship with Rashida is part of that. It’s about getting into your own sense of self. Tony is her at her truest, most human, most present, most grounded.
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But eventually she loses contact again. She kills Rashida because she doesn’t like Ni’Jah, before the hallucinatory sequence at the Ni’Jah concert. Would the story always end like this?
Yes. Because every episode, with the exception of episode 4, has a true basis for her murder. We found a 2018 murder that took place on the outskirts of Georgia involving a young woman who was brutally killed and dumped in some sort of desert wooded area. That was a white woman, but we did our own thing. All of this is based on real situations.
The ending is meant to be a little coming full circle, as emotionally jarring and stirring as it comes across. We started here and now we are here, but we fully understand why she had to make this journey to get where she is. In the pilot, she says, “If we meet Ni’Jah, we’ll be driven to her house. We’re going to eat.” And Episode 7 is that dinner—on her mind.