Everything to Know About 'Swarm,' Donald Glover’s New Prime Video Show

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The first episode is directed by Glover, who also helmed a number of Atlanta entries, the Globe-winning “B.A.N.” among them. However, Glover is not expected to take on this role for all episodes. Also currently unclear is whether he will tap into the same roster of uniquely complementary voices he enlisted across Atlanta, including his Childish Gambino collaborator Hiro Murai (fingers crossed!).

Dominique Fishback stars as Dre, a woman whose obsession with a seemingly Beyoncé-inspired pop megastar takes a decidedly dark turn. 

“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 told Vanity Fair when speaking about the uniquely powerful performance in this show by Fishback, whose 2023 also includes this June’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

Joining her in Swarm are Chloe Bailey, who plays Dre’s sister, and Damson Idris, who stars as the character’s boyfriend.

In the same Vanity Fair feature, Glover Cited Martin Scorsese’s 1982 film The King of Comedy as a reference point for the new series. The film, starring Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis, follows a similarly obsessed man who goes to troubling lengths (i.e. kidnapping, and eventually prison time) to launch his own comedy career.

“We just thought it’d be fun to make a post-truth Piano Teacher mixed with The King of Comedy,” Glover told the magazine. The former, directed by Michael Haneke and based on Elfriede Jelinek’s book, won multiple Cannes Film Festival awards upon its debut in 2001 under the French title La Pianeste.

As mentioned above, Swarm reteams Glover and Nabers after their inarguable artistic magic on FX’s Atlanta. Nabers served as an executive producer on the show and wrote Season 4’s Episode 5, titled “Work Ethic!” about a Tyler Perry-like Hollywood director. In October, Nabers reflected on bringing the show to a fitting conclusion, including crafting appropriate ends for each individual main character.

“I joined Atlanta as a fan,” she told Complex at the time. “I came in for Seasons 3 and 4, so the fact that I was given this opportunity at all was really awesome. But I think we really became a family. We’re all super close and I just think that we’ve done this really cool thing with Season 4, where we really give these characters the ending that I think they deserve.”

Among the first dispatches from behind the scenes of Swarm centered around the reports that Malia Obama, daughter to former POTUS Barack and former First Lady Michelle, had joined the writers’ room. 

In March 2022, for example, her writing style and commitment as part of the larger writing team were praised by Glover himself. At the time, the project was being discussed using the since-ditched title of Hive. She is currently listed as one of the writers on the show’s fifth episode. “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,” Nabers told Entertainment Weekly.