2023 Emmy Nominee: ‘Swarm’ Co-Creator Janine Nabers Reveals the Inspiration Behind the Season’s Most Buzzed About Show

Awards Daily: Janine, how did this idea come to you, and did you ever have any fear as to how ambitious the concept was? 

Janine Nabers: In terms of the ambitiousness, yes, definitely. There was a lot of fear. What’s great about Donald is that I think he loved fear because he very famously said with Atlanta, ‘We just thought we were gonna get canceled, so we just did it.’

And, I think for me, being a showrunner for the first time; obviously, you want your show to succeed. But there was always this realization that Swarm is a very polarizing show. People will have a lot of feelings about it, some great, and some maybe not. But that’s with any show, right? 

That was always part of the conversation; we’re showing a black woman who is a serial killer. And I think a lot of people might have thoughts about that. But if you believe in the story and in the person that is acting the story, which is Dom, who was incredible. In that case, it all comes together in a way where the fear dissipates, and the fear isn’t there anymore. By the time we got through all seven episodes, watched, and edited everything. I looked at it and thought, ‘Oh wow, this show is incredible.’

I’m incredibly proud of the show. And I think leading with fear only makes you a better artist, honestly. 

AD: Did you initially set out to create a metacommentary on pop culture and parasocial relationships?

JN: It all started with the character, with Dre. We knew we wanted to tell the story of a woman who is a serial killer who’s obsessed with a pop star.

I think a lot of people think the show is a commentary on stan culture. But at the end of the day, it’s really just about this particular woman and her ideology and identity and how she doesn’t become alive until she kills. For me, the pilot has always been the origin story of the villain. It’s always been about taking horror tropes— the girl that’s not as popular and she’s kind of invisible and maybe a fly on the wall in her own life; the virgin with a beautiful friend or sister that is helping her into her womanhood—all of those like little tropes of horror are very much planted into the pilot to give us that thing that we are familiar with, which is this girl; who is she? What’s going to happen to her? And then by the end of the pilot, we were like, ‘Oh, this girl, she’s a murderer, and we’re going to see if she gets away with it. What is this journey she’s going on now?

The music was always part of it; the fandom, the obsession with the pop star. But that was always in the backdrop of the story. We always knew that Ni’Jah wouldn’t be a character we really got to know. We only got to know Ni’Jah through the lens of Dre’s perspective and through images of Ni’Jah on Instagram, Twitter, and news clips. So it’s always been a very clear story for us about Dre and this killing spree over two and a half years.

AD: Earlier, you were discussing the idea of having a black woman be a serial killer. And I think one of the things that’s also very interesting to me about Swarm is that Dre’s killings are her way of processing her deep trauma and grief. 

JN: Yeah, my way into stories always has to be about something the character wants, and maybe something is taken away from that character. So for me, Swarm was always a story about grief. And Dre realizing that without this other person, [Marissa(Chloe Bailey)], who is she? And now this is a journey of her trying to get closer to the other person who understood her, at least in her mind, which is Ni’Jah, right?

That duality has always been like the drive for the story for me, Marissa and Dre. Even at the end, when you see Marissa’s face on Ni’Jah—that has always been the full story arc for me. It’s always been about her sister.

AD: I was at South by Southwest in Austin for Swarm’s premiere. It seemed to me that you were sort of shocked by the audience’s reaction and how much people loved it. Has the feedback been what you expected?

JN: I think many people think making a show is a huge thing, and it is. You’re making a show with hundreds of people. But it’s still a very small process when you’re a writer. When you’re creating the show, you’re writing it, and then you’re having these very intimate conversations with directors and actors and watching these very intimate scenes happen. And you really just don’t know what the reaction will be—so showing Swarm in a theater that size with so many people laughing and screaming. And I think a woman threw up during the murder scene. You just have people who have these insane reactions, and it just blows your mind. I’ll always feel like a kid in a candy shop. Even if people are throwing tomatoes at the screen. It’s still exciting because you’re just like, ‘Wow, people feel this.’ And the feeling of people feeling Dre and obviously knowing that she’s an unreliable narrator, but still going with her through that journey was very exciting. 

AD: At the SXSW post-screening Q&A, you mentioned the idea that Dre is somebody that exists in the real world, this girl that nobody sees and blends into the background. That comment really made an impression on me. I think that’s so true—there are people like Dre in our lives that are going through these sorts of insane, difficult things, but we are just not paying attention.

JN: Yeah, that was very purposeful because, at the end of the day, she does a lot of harmful things, right? When you watch the show, you’re like, ‘Oh, how did this woman get away with it?’ Because people didn’t see this black woman in society as a real person.

She is treated in a lot of ways as someone who is a little bit invisible. You see, in episode three, someone mistaking her for someone else. Or in the pilot with Khalid (Damson Idris), her constantly being like, ‘I don’t drink.’ And him never really remembering that. Again, the idea that this girl is not really sticking concretely in anyone’s mind. Until Marissa. 

In episode four, all those women see her, but they see her because they are trying to manipulate her. So, all of that was very purposeful, that intention of’ Who is Dre? Who sees her? How does she make herself seen? How does she give herself autonomy? All of that was very carefully thought out. 

AD: What does life look like after Swarm? Where do you go from here as a writer and as a showrunner? Are you headed in a completely different direction, or are there ideas here that you want to continue to explore?

JN: Yeah. I started off as a playwright, and my plays are definitely a little outside of the box as well in terms of the way that the stories are told. And there are so many other stories that I’m working on right now. One with Amazon, one with HBO, all very outside the box, fun, Black stories. I hope to continue to tell those stories. I know that Donald will. I know a lot of our writers will. And I’m hoping that even more women and women of color will see Swarm as an example of telling a story in a way you want to tell it and making your own rules.