TMZ spoke with Trevor Jackson at LAX Monday to get his thoughts on the criticism over Chlöe Bailey’s sex scene in the Prime Video series Swarm.
“I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s art, and I support Chlöe in any- and everything that she does,” Jackson said of his Grown-ish co-star in the clip above. “She’s an amazing person, and she’s an artist, and she can do whatever she wants, whatever she feels led to do. It’s her life, and she’ll always have my support every time.”
Chlöe told HipHollywood that while she’s “very into my body and being a woman and all that,” she was scared about filming her first sex scene in Donald Glover’s latest project. She credits the crew and Damson Idris, who plays her boyfriend Khalid, for making her comfortable on the set.
Speaking with Complex, Bailey, who plays Marissa, the sister of Dre (Dominique Fishback), declined to discuss the scene, and preferred to highlight the show’s themes of sisterhood and mental health. Swarm co-creator Janine Nabers told Complex the relationship between Marissa and Dre operates as a female counterpart to Al and Earn’s relationship in Atlanta.
“I think when you look at Atlanta and you look at the relationship between Al and Earn, I think that there are just a lot of things that are unsaid between them,” Nabers, an Atlanta veteran, explained. “And I think we really wanted to find the female counterpart to that. Obviously, this is a much darker and much more extreme story, but the female counterpoint of ‘family first,’ and understanding, but not always understanding, but still having this kind of unspoken kinship for sure, so that was really important to us.”
On the subject of relationships, Trevor Jackson said critics cannot compare Chlöe’s career path to her sister Halle, who can be seen in the live-action The Little Mermaid later this year.
“There’s no one way to do life,” he said, adding that the “Pray It Away” singer should not “pay attention to anything outside of yourself.”
