Swarm

In Amazon Prime Video's horror comedy (all seven episodes now streaming), "Judas and the Black Messiah" breakout Dominique Fishback plays Dre, a crazed fan of a ...

Glover echoed praise for Obama in an interview with [Vanity Fair](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/01/donald-glover-show-swarm-first-look). Asked at SXSW whether Beyoncé has seen the show, Nabers answered, "Of course," but declined to elaborate further. "Swarm" in no way tries to hide its Beyoncé influences, with fictional pop star Ni'Jah recreating almost exact images from Queen B's "Renaissance" and "Everything is Love" eras. [Dominique Fishback](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2017/10/18/5-new-faces-fall-tv-breakout-stars/771451001/) plays Dre, a crazed fan of a Beyoncé-like pop star named Ni'Jah (Nirine S. ["The Little Mermaid" star Halle Bailey](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2023/03/06/halle-bailey-emotiona-reaction-little-mermaid-doll-reveal/11415374002/). "I feel like she's just somebody who's going to have really good things coming soon." You may spot a notable name among the show's creative team: Malia Obama, daughter of Barack and Michelle Obama. Singer/model Paris Jackson is daughter of the late Michael Jackson and portrays a stripper who befriends Dre. She also brought out Glover, who goes by stage name Childish Gambino, to perform at her concert in Inglewood, California, last December. Brown) [who takes her obsession to murderous extremes](https://www.amazon.com/Swarm-Season-1/dp/B0B8NLVH1L). The show is inspired in part by an urban legend that circulated online following the release of Beyoncé's 2016 album "Lemonade," which hints at husband Jay-Z's alleged infidelity. Here's everything you need to know about the series, which co-stars Billie Eilish and is co-written by Malia Obama:

Billie Eilish appears in Episode 4 of 'Swarm', Donald Glover and Janine Nabers thriller for Amazon Prime Video.

The more time Dre spends with Cricket and the rest of the women, the more she realizes that this isn’t just a nice group of friends. She plays the role with enough sincerity and intensity that you immediately enter Dre’s headspace enough to wonder if this woman is just a nice ally? [Donald Glover ](https://decider.com/tag/donald-glover)and [Janine Nabers](https://decider.com/tag/janine-nabers), Swarm follows one young women who becomes unhealthily obsessed with a pop star by the name of Ni’Jah (Nirine S. If you’ve seen even a minute of this series, you know it isn’t long before that nice offer descends into a dark and darkly funny nightmare. After noticing a police officer harassing Dre, Cricket scares him off and insists that Dre come stay with her and her friends. [Swarm](https://decider.com/show/swarm/) is one of those shows that defies expectations at every turn.

The horror-thriller series, which Glover created with Janine Nabers, about a mega-fan's violent devotion to a Beyoncé-like pop star, succeeds neither as ...

That’s a meaningful difference between her and the archetypal white male serial killer, but “Swarm” seems unwilling to grapple with the dubious milestone of Black female sociopathy it presents, tiptoeing instead around the social conditions that contributed to Dre’s unstable childhood, as well as the expectations that help her elude capture. Dre’s gradual descent into tragic villainy is lurching and yet not without poignancy; few scenes this year gutted me like the sequence in which she has to look away from one of her final victims, sacrificing her own potential happiness in obeisant service to a higher power. And in these initial chapters the supporting characters are more sharply drawn: a group of Tennessee strippers whose sororal overtures to Dre, the new girl at the club, backfire; a formerly obese man (Byron Bowers) who invites Dre into his home and is quickly undone by the combination of sex and junk food that she offers. But even her marvellously versatile performance can’t make up for the wan character development and the tonal wobbliness that sink the series. As a drifter, Dre tries on a range of gender expressions, from sparkly stripper gear to a rather butch (or transmasculine) guise. The season builds toward a morbid, tongue-in-cheek provocation: What if the female empowerment and self-actualization that Ni’Jah’s anthems champion were channelled into a calling in mass murder? But Marissa is ready to grow up; she’d rather spend her birthday with her boyfriend, Khalid (Damson Idris), than with Dre at a Ni’Jah concert, even if Dre opened up a new credit card to get them premium tickets. A more absurdist version of the character would’ve been right at home in Glover’s “Atlanta,” for which Nabers also wrote; that show’s final season featured a serial killer who targets the participants of a social-media dance challenge set to Soulja Boy’s 2007 hit “Crank That.” But this darker, meaner series, on Prime Video, succeeds neither as satire nor as psychological study. The series opens in the dingy Houston apartment that the fantasy-prone Dre shares with her former foster sister and sole friend, Marissa (Chloe Bailey), a mall clerk and aspiring makeup artist who supports her financially. Every last inch of her gleams: her hair, her eyes, her teeth, the beads and paillettes that shimmer with each hip thrust or arm swing, but, most of all, her skin. Yet the object of fascination in “Swarm,” Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’s new horror-thriller series, isn’t this unmistakable Beyoncé stand-in. And, as with any queen, her domestic orbit is common knowledge: the rapper husband with the capitalist hustle and the wandering eye, their twins, the gifted but hopelessly overshadowed younger sister.

Billie Eilish has made a surprise acting debut in an episode of Donald Glover's new thriller series, "Swarm," which landed on Prime Video on Friday.

We gravitate toward people who are juggling multiple hats.” The show, which explores the dark side of stan culture, features a star-studded cast including singer Chloe Bailey, “Snowfall” star Damson Idris and actor Rickey Thompson. Their exchange gets disturbing when Eilish asks “What color was the milk?” and Dre replies: “It was red.”

The show also features Paris Jackson, Chloe Bailey, Damson Idris, Rickey Thompson, Rory Culkin, Kiersey Clemons and Byron Bowers. All seven episodes of the show ...

“I really wanted to stretch myself as an actor,” said the 31-year-old actress. “What color was the milk?,” Eilish’s character asks with a sweetly sinister look on her face. milk spilled on the carpet,” Dre says.

In the new psycho-thriller from Donald Glover, an obsessive fan goes berserk. Is the era of social media to blame?

The most convincing aspect of the series is Fishback. The jewel of the series is its commitment to sharp turns—just when you think it will veer right, it puts the car in reverse and runs over a pile of bodies. Death is “beautiful,” Dre reasons, because “it’s equal, it happens to everybody.” According to Nabers, a former writer on Atlanta, the cerebral architecture of the show originates from niche thrillers like The Piano Teacher (2001) and Elephant (2003), where the wedding of loss, rage, love, and obsession are framed with razor intimacy. So she uses that hurt to hurt others, embarking on a cross-crounty trip where she kills anyone who speaks negatively of Ni’jah. It is a portrait of superfandom in kamikaze form. (A disclaimer before each episode cautions: “This is not a work of fiction. With the exception of season 3—the most ambitious season or the worst, depending on who you ask—it never left the boundaries of the city, its hidden treasures and trapdoors. It’s got keys in the ignition and a tank full of gas, slinking from Texas to California to Tennessee and back. As we find out, she is a honeycomb of sticky traumas. That it happens to be inspired by the BeyHive—perhaps the internet’s most notorious legion of superfan—do with that what you will. Everything is in service of Ni’jah, the Beyoncé-level pop star she can’t live without. For Dre (Dominique Fishback), the answer is a no-brainer.

The Atlanta creator is clearly targeting Knowles obsessives in this menacing series about the dark side of music fandom. But its point is obvious and its ...

Dre is a slightly patronising cartoon of a lonely outcast, her naivety and awkwardness constantly pushed to the max as she glowers stroppily at everyone. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is intentional.” In an episode falteringly styled as a true-crime documentary, following the only cop in the US who has identified Dre as the likely culprit for a string of murders, Swarm goes archly meta, with Ni’Jah defictionalised and replaced by the real Beyoncé, her name bleeped out when characters say it but easily lip-readable. She works in a strip club, bonding uneasily with her fellow dancers and initially frightening off punters with her clunking gait and insistence on dancing to sad Ni’Jah ballads. She gets a new credit card to buy front-row Ni’Jah tickets she is nowhere near being able to afford, and is devastated when Marissa – who used to be as keen a member of the Swarm, the Ni’jah fan collective, as Dre still is – does not want to accompany her to the gig because she is well into her 20s now and has moved on. [Watchmen](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/21/watchmen-review-the-perfect-superhero-story-for-our-tattered-times-hbo-alan-moore) and [Atlanta](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jun/29/donald-glover-atlanta-season-three-review-this-peerless-shows-impact-will-live-forever) – sets up a mood of flickering menace. If that doesn’t make it a must-watch, or at least a must-try, Glover’s parallel career as the rapper Childish Gambino increases the intrigue: Swarm is about the dark side of music fandom, and if anyone can turn that into art, you would think Glover can.

The producers of "Swarm," a new Amazon series co-created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, have issued a "Do not spoil" list that precludes detailing much ...

And the gist of it, ultimately, is the corrosive effects of engaging in blind hero worship, basically turning one’s life over to somebody that you don’t even know. “Swarm,” too, is almost defiantly weird, in a mish-mash of styles and themes that draws from biting satire, understated comedy and most pointedly of all, horror, in a way that recalls some of Jordan Peele’s post-“Get Out” films. But there is a lot to be said about the limited series’ provocative view of fan culture, and how such loyalty can turn into obsession.