Swarm's Janine Nabers Wanted Fans To Fill In The Gaps About Dre's History
The Amazon Prime series "Swarm" — which was created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover — follows Andrea "Dre" Greene (Dominique Fishback), a woman unhealthily obsessed with Beyonce-like pop star Ni'Jah (Nirine S. Brown) as well as her foster sister Marissa (Chloe Bailey). After Marissa takes her own life in the wake of finding out that her boyfriend Khalid (Damson Idris) was cheating on her, Dre kills Khalid. But Khalid turns out to just be one of the many murders that Dre commits throughout the series' seven episodes.
Suffice to say, Dre is a complicated character, who is at many times confounding. The motive behind each of Dre's kills isn't entirely clear and much of her background is never revealed, so viewers are left wondering how Dre ended up where she is. Finally, in the penultimate episode, viewers get some background information: Dre grew up in the foster system and was eventually adopted by Marissa's family, but was then sent back for violent behavior (although exactly what happened isn't specified).
Still, there's much left to wonder about regarding Dre and her past. According to Nabers, this was intentional. In an interview with Variety, Nabers said, "We really just wanted to let people fill in their own gaps to the story. There's a mystery as to how she got to where she was and that's okay. It's okay to not know everything."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Nabers said they wanted to keep the viewers distant from Dre's trauma
During the Variety interview, "Swarm" co-creator Janine Nabers further explained what they were going for with Episode 6, which is stylized as a true crime documentary. Firstly, they wanted to showcase the reality of growing up Black in the South.
Nabers said, "[Episode 6] felt a little bit like a step out, where you can intellectualize what you've seen — the foster system and this idea of Black women falling through the cracks — from a personal perspective. Anyone who's Black and from the South has some sort of experience with the foster system, whether it be friends that have dealt with it, family they've had. It's a very real thing." She then added that it's something that both she and co-creator Donald Glover had seen growing up and could relate to.
But at the same time, Nabers said that they didn't want to focus too much on the particulars of Dre's story because that would mean focusing on the specifics of her trauma. Nabers continued, "You can intellectualize trauma, but we didn't want to dramatize what it was like before we are introduced to Dre that led her to become who she is." With this in mind, they chose instead to let the viewers fill in the gaps.