We’re nearly as obsessed with Swarm as Dre is with Ni’Jah. Well, not quite… Warning: mild spoilers ahead.
Andrea “Dre” Greene, a young lady from Houston, would do anything for her favourite R&B singer Ni’Jah: max out credit cards, shun her sister’s boyfriend, and even murder the star’s haters. Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah) stars as the psychotic Dre in the seven-part satirical psychological thriller that debuted earlier this month on Amazon Prime.
Writers and creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers wanted to make it blatantly obvious that pop star Ni’Jah is a parallel to Beyoncé. Of course, Ni’Jah’s fanbase’s nickname is the Swarm very similar to Beyoncé stan’s nickname the Beyhive, Dre accidentally bites Ni’Jah just like the rumoured incident with a fan biting Bey, Ni’Jah’s releases “Festival” about her unfaithful husband much like Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and there’s even a Solange doppelganger in the show. The series even begins with the slightly on-the-nose message: “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is intentional”.
Though the events are inspired by details and incidents throughout Beyoncé’s career, the examination of fandom culture is of course applicable beyond her fans. “Beyhive don’t kill us, it’s not that bad, it’s actually pretty cool!”, Childish Gamino joked at the premiere of the show.
Glover called Swarm a “post-truth TV show” in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. The Atlanta writer and Janine Nabers assess the dangers of parasocial relationships showing how online fandoms can spring into witch hunt attacks, dox those that diss the star they stan, invade celebrities’ privacy, and even go as far as violence through using Dre as depiction of an extreme case.
Talking to Vulture, Glover said he wanted Dre to be “brutal” and told Fishback to watch Isabella Huppert in the Piano Teacher for inspiration for her performance. However, some of the writer’s comments on how he prepared the actress for the role have rubbed people the wrong way. Glover told Vulture he instructed the actress to: “Think of it more like an animal and less like a person”.
Despite the lack of help she received in interpreting her character’s deeper motives, Dominique Fishback delivers a spine-chilling performance as Dre as she continues further into psychosis as the years pass. The brief connection we get to see between Chloe Bailey (Black-ish) who plays Dre’s sister Marissa and Dre gives us more insight into the softer side of the character but unlucky for us their screen time together is short lived. Packed with gore, tension, as well as dark humour, Swarm is a thriller that keeps its audience engaged with its hooking plot and dramatic performances.
The show seems to find its groove more as we get further down the rabbit hole. Just as Dre struggles to distinguish between reality and fiction so does the viewer as episode six plunges us into a true crime documentary following a police detective trying to solve Dre’s murders. In a particularly meta, twist Donald Glover himself even gives a red-carpet interview about him making a TV show based on Dre’s life therefore suggesting Dre exists in our world. It’s a mind melt moment nearly as genius as the second half of the American Horror Story series Roanoke.
A little ironically Twitter and TikTok have been hyped over popstar Billie Eillish’s acting debut as the extremely intense blonde lesbian cult leader Eva who takes Dre under her wing in one of the murder’s more vulnerable moments. She’s just the slice of camp that the show needed.
Image by Prime Video
Words by Molly Sutherland
Header Image by Quantrell D. Colbert
