2 February 2023

Musician and creator of ‘Atlanta,’ Donald Glover, is back with a new TV series

The new show, ‘Swarm,’ is described as a "post-truth The Piano Teacher mixed with The King of Comedy."

We’re living in the age of obsessive standom, and Donald Glover’s tapping into that terrifying culture with his newest series, Swarm, coming to Amazon 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.

Swarm shares a lot of similarities, 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.

Fishback, who won plaudits and praise for her role in 2021’s Judas and the Black Messiah, takes on the lead role of Dre – a young woman obsessed with a fictional pop star who bears a striking similarity to Beyoncé. Swarm follows Dre’s obsession as it takes darker and weirder turns. Chloe Bailey – one half of Chloe x Halle – 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.’”

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.”

  • Writer Chris Saunders Banner Image Credit

Related Content