Janine Nabers, co-creator of Swarm with Donald Glover, said she penned a letter to Beyoncé to let the superstar know the new psychological thriller is not trying to tarnish the reputation of the Beyhive.
The new Amazon Prime series follows Dre, a super fan of the fictional R&B pop star Ni’Jah, who takes violent measures due to her disturbing admiration for the entertainer. Ni’Jah’s fan base is called “The Swarm,” much like Beyoncé’s Beyhive, and her image and likeness on the show bears a strong resemblance to the real-life “Single Ladies” hitmaker.
It’s why Nabers found it necessary to reach out to Queen Bey during the show’s production to let her know there was no ill will in the show’s intent.
“I wrote her a letter basically being like, ‘Yo, you’re great. I love you. This is a show that we’re working on. These are the people that are writing on it,” Nabers told Vulture.
“She’s worked with a lot of the people who have worked on our show. It’s a family. This is not a crusade to tear down anyone’s reputation,” she continued.
“I know it’s extreme, and I know that our character is doing a lot of crazy sh*t, but this is a love letter to Black women.”
When it came to why Nabers
and Glover chose to model Ni’Jah around Beyoncé’s image and fanbase, it came down to the “salacious” stories and myths the show creators heard about the star’s die-hard fans.“I think for us, again, it’s the feeling that that person evokes,” Nabers told
Elle. “There are just so many interesting stories that you read on the internet about someone or something, and you don’t know if it’s true. You’re like, “What is this story about? Who did this? Someone actually did this to someone?”“Like “the bite,” for example…that, to me, was always just, how do you get there? How do you get to a person and bite their face?” she added.
Taking the rumors into account, Nabers and Glover focused on how the occurrences relate to the Black community.
“Taking these salacious moments that everyone talks about, [that] every Black person I know has a theory on, and just putting our own spin on it, to me, is what makes entertainment dope, and that’s what made this process fun,” she explained.
“We were just really happy that we were able to write the way that we wanted to write, and that Amazon legally gave us the privilege to do that.”
Nabers and Glovers’ Swarm certainly has the streets talking. The eerie thriller is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime.