Premiered this Friday (17), on Amazon Prime Video, the series swarmcreated by Donald Glover (Atlanta) and Janine Nabers (watchmen). Mixing suspense, terror and drama, the production marks the debut of singer Billie Eilish as an actress and explores the dark and toxic sides of fandoms, groups of fans that, in some cases, develop questionable obsessions with certain artists and pop culture figures.
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As the subject is of great relevance and fits very well into the current scenario, some viewers have wondered if Swarm is based on true stories. And the answer is: yes! To begin with, the character Ni’Jah (Nirine S. Brown), who lives a fictional pop diva in the series, was inspired by the singer Beyoncé, who has a fandom called the Bey Hive (Beehive, in free translation). The name of the fandom addressed in the series is Swarm (Swarm). Beehive, Swarm… You could notice the first relationship with reality, right?
But things don’t stop there. In an interview with Shondaland, Nabers revealed that the first episode of Swarm, for example, is based on a true story. “The pilot is based on a real event that happened on the internet. We started our story from that and built [a série] with real events that happened in the United States between 2016 and 2018”, said the screenwriter.
The actual episode Nabers is referring to took place in 2016, involving Beyoncé and a bizarre rumor that took over the internet at the time. “In April 2016, “Lemonade” [álbum de Beyoncé] was released. That same night, there was a rumor about a woman named Marissa Jackson who committed suicide after watching the videos for the album because they basically confirmed that a very powerful man [Jay-Z] was cheating on one of the most amazing, beautiful and successful pop stars of our time [Beyoncé]”, he explained.
The producer says that this story remained alive for a long time on the internet and that it was the basis for her to start researching more similar cases involving obsessed fans. “He was [a história] ground zero for the show, and that’s when I started researching all these crazy stories that we’ve heard on the internet or that actually existed involving specific artists and how we could bring that to reality. […]”, he added.
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In short, yes, the episodes of Swarm it is inspired by real events, mainly those involving Beyoncé and cases of obsessive fans around her. Dre (Dominique Fishback), protagonist of the series, is not a real person, but his actions were created from situations seen on the internet and in real life. In fact, in an interview with Variety, Nabers stated that Beyoncé watched Swarmbut who could not comment much more than that on the subject.
Did Queen B enjoy the production or was she horrified?
