[This story contains major spoilers for Swarm season one, episode four, “Running Scared.”]
Swarm, co-created and co-executive produced by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover, includes a slew of celeb cameos, together with Rory Culkin and Paris Jackson. But episode 4’s celeb visitor star — the Grammy-winning Billie Eilish — has delivered one of many collection’ buzziest appearances.
Set between 2016 and 2018, Swarm follows Dre (Dominique Fishback), a fan of the fictional Beyoncé-esque music icon Ni’Jah, whose love for her favourite singer crosses the road from obsessive to murderous. After setting off on a cross-country journey, she meets a slew of characters — and commits a slew of crimes.
Alongside killing a string of haters within the identify of her icon, Dre hits the highway to see her favourite star at Bonnaroo regardless of not having a wristband, however will get pulled over in Tennessee by a racist cop.
Dre (Dominique Fishback) with Billie Eilish’s Eva.
Courtesy of Prime Video/Amazon Studios
While Dre’s attempting to get him off her tail at a gasoline station, a younger white lady involves her rescue, and Dre follows her again to a compound filled with extra seemingly pleasant girls. It’s a gaggle led by Eilish’s Eva, whose heat and welcoming nature hides one thing extra sinister beneath.
Eilish, in her appearing debut, was advised by Swarm casting director Carmen Cuba, Nabers instructed The Hollywood Reporter (Nabers’ full interview publishes Monday). “When she pitched [Billie Eilish] for the role of Eva, we were like, ‘Oh, she’s really cool! Let’s go with it!’ And it worked out,” stated Nabers. “She was great!”
Courtesy of Prime Video/Amazon Studios
While Eva says she “feels so drawn” to Dre and suggests she’s “part of the tribe now,” it turns into clear as Dre spends extra time that Eva’s setup is much less a commune and extra a cult. The girls put on the identical colours and share the identical physique manufacturers. Eva, the “female empowerment” group’s govt director, hosts coaching and therapeutic periods with Dre, who will get lured in following a hike.
It’s paying homage to a number of Hollywood-adjacent cults, most clearly the NXIVM cult, which concerned actresses like Allison Mack, who’s at present serving a three-year jail sentence. Nabers has stated Eilish’s character was impressed by that cult and it’s chief Keith Raniere, who was sentenced to 120 years in jail and fined $1,750,000 within the high-profile sex-trafficking case.
“There is a cult that existed in the world that was very prominent during that time,” Nabers tells THR, referencing NXIVM (see THR‘s 2018 cowl story on Mack and NXIVM). “And that is the kind of true-crime element to that episode. And I think that when people think of the idea of artists or celebrities, there is this idea of thinking about the cult of Taylor Swift, or the cult of the Beatles or whatever. What we were really interested in was just seeing someone who worships at the altar of ‘something,’ and (exploring) this idea of what is the cult of the mind.”
Eventually, Eva’s entrancing aura turns darkish, her manipulations of Ni’Jah’s greatest fan pivoting to unsettling threats after Dre begins to significantly query the ladies surrounding her. After their makes an attempt to isolate her by way of meditative periods, taking her cellphone and cleansing the blood from considered one of her murders out of her automotive’s backseat, Dre decides it’s time to maneuver on even when Eva doesn’t agree.
Courtesy of Prime Video/Amazon Studios
The end in Eilish’s Eva getting run over a number of occasions by Dre, together with a number of of her cult members.
Fishback instructed Rolling Stone the singer was “respectful of the craft” and “came in with ideas, wanting to talk about it, being game to rehearse,” with the actress including that the “Eva character essentially asks for it.”
