Donald Glover's new show, Swarm , is like 'a sister to Atlanta ' — and dangerously in love with Beyoncé
Who among us hasn't been crazily obsessed over a pop star?
Who among us hasn't been kicked off Twitter following a series of increasingly unhinged rants about the glaring absence of Renaissance visuals in this, the year of our Lord 2023? Who among us hasn't been served restraining orders from two-thirds of Destiny's Child (and not the two you're thinking of)?
We're living in the age of obsessive standom and Donald Glover's tapping into that terrifying, Ticketmaster-toppling love with his newest series, Swarm, coming to Amazon's Prime Video.
Quantrell D. Colbert/Prime Video
Starring Dominique Fishback, Swarm was created by Glover and Janine Nabors, a writer and producer on Atlanta, which recently came to an end after four seasons and countless "WTF?" moments.
Swarm, in fact, shares a lot of DNA, or at least a lot of the crew, with the Emmy-winning series, with Nabers telling Vanity Fair that the show is like "a sister to Atlanta" that lives in "the same tonal space." Glover describes the show as a "post-truth The Piano Teacher mixed with The King of Comedy," referring to Michael Haneke's 2001 psychological drama featuring a tour de force performance from Isabelle Huppert and Martin Scorsese's 1982 dark comic masterpiece starring Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis.
For the lead, Glover was hoping to find a Huppert-type, "as far as risk-takers in performances," he tells VF, and he found his risk-taker in Fishback, who won plaudits and praise for her scene-stealing role in 2021's Judas and the Black Messiah.
Quantrell D. Colbert/Prime Video
Fishback is Dre, a young woman obsessed with a fictional pop star, who bears a striking similarity to a one Mrs. Knowles-Carter, and Swarm follows Dre's obsession as it takes darker, and weirder turns. Chloe Bailey — one half of Chloe x Halle, Beyoncé protégé, That Girl — plays her sister Marissa, and Damson Idris her boyfriend.
"When we shot the last scene of the pilot, every single person stopped what they were doing and gave Dom a standing ovation for three minutes," Nabers said of Fishback. "I've been doing TV for a long time and I've never seen that. That was the moment that Donald and I looked at each other and we were like, 'All right — we got something right.'"
To capture that youthful 20-something energy of its characters, the show tapped Malia Obama to join the writers room. Yes, that Malia Obama. Michelle's daughter. The Harvard grad is getting into the family business ... well, the other family business, television.
Quantrell D. Colbert/Prime Video
"She's a very professional person," Nabers said of the former First Daughter. "She's an incredible writer and artist. We really wanted to give her the opportunity to get her feet wet in TV and see if this is something she wants to continue doing."
Glover promises Swarm's tone will be "a strange one," but ultimately he and Nabers wanted to make a classic anti-hero, in the vein of Don Draper or Tony Soprano, only "through the lens of a Black, modern-day woman."
Anti-hero, eh? Sounds like the wrong pop diva, but, hey — a hit's a hit.
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