‘Swarm’ Showrunner Janine Nabers Looks Back at Dre’s Rampage’s Ominous Start

In Janine Nabers and Donald Glover’s Prime Video thriller Swarm, Dominique Fishback’s bumbling social misfit Dre is driven to murder when her foster sister Marissa (Chlöe Bailey) commits suicide after discovering her boyfriend, Khalid (Damson Idris), has been cheating on her. Dre appears at Khalid’s house in the final scene of the pilot with ambiguous intent – but by the time the credits roll, she’s bludgeoned him to death with a salt lamp, setting up the murderous rampage Dre will embark on for the rest of time . series. Nabers explains how this pivotal scene evolved from the initial sketches to what mystified viewers would eventually see on screen.

Nabers liked the idea of ​​showing a softer side to Khalid’s macho exterior in his home: “We added a dog, a Rottweiler, for that particular scene,[to]set the tone. We put Khalid down as this guy who’s a bully, he’s stubborn, he’s the type of guy who probably walks around the neighborhood with a shirt off and lets his Rottweiler bark at people. But he’s this kid who actually lives in a real, very homey house.

Dre’s choice of murder weapon went through many iterations before the shooting of the scene. “It was a pan, and then I think it was a billiard ball, which made no sense because we wanted something she could club with. At one point it may have been a hammer,” explains Nabers. “Then we were in this production meeting and Drew (Daniels, director of photography) was the one who thought very brilliantly about the salt rock. As soon as he said it, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s it. That’s it absolutely.’ “

“It was actually really easy to write this scene because it felt like a lot of calling back to what we had already established between (Dre and Khalid),” Nabers muses. “Like swearing, or saying, ‘I don’t drink,’ and that he offered her beer earlier in the episode. Just feeling like this man has never seen who this woman is.”

“This final scene is very round, in terms of her relationship with Khalid, and how it leads up to this moment where you think it could be kind of a sexual awakening with her,” says Nabers. “It’s hard to photograph black people on film at night. But it’s purposeful at the time, because the only light we see is this salt rock lamp, and then the flashes of these eerie alien images on TV. It feels like horror, it feels like something (ominous) is approaching, but it also feels like it could be sensual, a little bit sexy.”

The ending of the pilot that aired on Prime looks completely different from the last lines of this script, with Dre feasting on a pie after killing Khalid. “Her eating the cake was never written,” says Nabers. “We looked at her relationship with food,[which]is kind of funny, but also weird. It felt a bit like a stage play, especially when shooting this scene, because we only had one take because there was so much blood. We did and we realized there was a hair on the film. We were like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’ Then we realized that the hair was actually so on the bottom that it was okay. We didn’t have to shoot again.”

This whole short scene was cut from the final product: “We shot it through first where she bludgeons him and then she leaves, and we see her drive off,” Nabers explains. “But it was just so strong to go out with her eating this pie, and this dog barking at her and making her eyes with the dog at the end.”

This story first appeared in a standalone June issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.