Donald Glover has come under fire for his directorial treatment of Dominique Fishback in the new Amazon Prime Video series, Swarm.
On Wednesday (March 22), a viral tweet surfaced on Twitter containing quotes from Glover’s interview with Vulture about how he prepped Fishback to approach her character “Dre” in the series.
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The actor/director/rapper said he intentionally decided not to talk to Dominique Fishback about Dre’s backstory because he wanted the viewers to create their own humanistic interpretation of the volatile character.
“I kept telling her, ‘You’re not regular people,” he said. “You don’t have to find the humanity in your character. That’s the audience’s job.’ ”
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Donald Glover then said even though Fishback’s lack of knowledge about the character made it hard for her to carry out the role, she should approach it from the perspective of a mammal.
“She really was lost a lot of the time,” he said. “Think of it more like an animal and less like a person … Actors in general, they want to get layered performances. And I don’t think Dre is that layered.”
He added: “I wanted her performance to be brutal. It’s a raw thing. It reminds me of how I have a fear with dogs because I’m like, ‘You’re not looking at me in the eye, I don’t know what you’re capable of.’ ”
Once the tweet started to spread on Twitter, there were mixed opinions about what Donald Glover was alluding to when describing Dominique Fishback’s portrayal of Dre in Swarm. People also brought up past situations where he allegedly made misogynistic and anti-Black comments.
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“Everytime something comes out about Donald Glover and his hatred for black women I just can’t help but remembering the time he said he gets turned on by white women calling him the hard r and how he had an entire tumblr where he pretended to be an Asian women,” one user wrote.
Another argued: “This is why we need not continue elevating people with a proven record of harboring internalized anti-Blackness or being problematic in our community. Any project he’s involved in is going to bear the mark of his biases, regardless of whomever else he’s collaborating with.”
There were others that defended Donald Glover’s comments, though, pointing out that Dominique Fishback’s character is a serial killer.
“Wait…… maybeeee he said this because the character is a SERIAL KILLER and he did not want to HUMANIZE and subsequently JUSTIFY someone (black woman or not) being a SERIAL KILLER [two shoulder shrug emojis],” tweeted one person. “Idk just another way to interpret it.”
Another user added: “They on twitter mad Donald Glover won’t humanize fictional murderers you gotta love the internet.”
Prior to Donald Glover’s comments, it appears as if Swarm co-creator Janine Nabers made similar comments to Vulture about Dominique Fishback’s portrayal character of Dre as well.
“You see within that film that so many people are trying to project humanity onto her and she just doesn’t take it,” she said. “There are all these moments where you’re on the edge of your seat and you’re like, ‘Okay, this is going to be the moment where we see her really take some empathy or learn a lesson.’ But it never is.”
Also starring Chloe Bailey, Damson Idris, Billie Eilish and more, Swarm follows a young woman who’s obsessed with a fictional pop star, with the show exploring her fandom and how it takes her to “dark, unexpected places.”
“We just thought it’d be fun to make a post-truth Piano Teacher mixed with The King of Comedy,” Donald Glover told Vanity Fair in January, referencing the 2001 erotic psychological drama and 1982 Martin Scorsese film.
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“A lot of people did it out of the kindness of their hearts and they did a really great job,” he added. “Dom, Damson, Chloe. I was really blown away at how hard they worked on the tone, ’cause it’s a strange one.”
