This year’s Best Movie/Limited Series acting races are looking more and more like a rogues’ gallery by the day. Having shot from 30th to seventh place over the past month, Dominique Fishback is giving the Lead Actress field its very own serial killer. In “Swarm,” Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’ post-”Atlanta” collaboration, she plays Andrea “Dre” Greene, a Ni’Jah stan who embarks on a violent odyssey of self-actualization to silence the pop singer’s critics. It’s hard not to get a spine-tingling reminder of Javier Bardem’s villain in “No Country for Old Men,” Anton Chigurh, flipping a coin and daring his next potential victim to “call it” whenever she asks, “Who’s your favorite artist?”
Though its message about deviant behavior springing from a void of meaningful social bonds isn’t new — “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Black Bird,” which are currently both frontrunners for Best Movie/Limited Series Actor (Evan Peters) and Supporting Actor (Paul Walter Hauser), respectively, argue just as much — “Swarm’s” emphasis on toxic online standom does feel particularly timely. “A pitch-perfect portrait of arrested development and idiosyncrasies” (Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge), Dre has been compared to the Joker, Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”), and Rupert Pupkin (“The King of Comedy”).
SEE Emmy predictions 2023: Jason Segel, Dominique Fishback now predicted to receive nominations
Nick Allen (RogerEbert.com) writes, “Fishback’s work channels the same way those characters have revealed the ids of their time period and left an unforgettable mark.” Leslie Byron Pitt (The Playlist) likens a tearful monologue in the show’s fourth episode to Mia Goth’s work in “Pearl” and says, “Dre is never made cutesy or cuddly. Any empathy gained from watching her character is hard-earned, and this alone makes her compelling.” Fishback has cited Oscar winners Charlize Theron (“Monster”), Hilary Swank (“Boys Don’t Cry”) and Heath Ledger (“The Dark Knight”) as inspirations.
Shamira Ibrahim (BuzzFeed) writes that the actress and first-time producer “puts on the equivalent of a one-woman show, navigating between personas and deepening Dre’s character as the immersive episodes shift in format from psychosexual thriller to road-tripping dark comedy to true crime mockumentary,” adding that she “elevates the series.” Indeed, Fishback’s discussions with Glover and Nabers resulted in a more credible character arc. The second episode opens with Dre performing to Ni’Jah at a strip club before being told by an annoyed co-worker that patrons don’t want to “see all that dancing to some sad-ass shit.”
A later, more sexually charged performance was at one point removed from the script, but Fishback believed it to be a necessary bridge between the episode’s awkward beginning and a scene of Dre accompanying the other dancers on a house call. “Those girls were bullying her. What other reason would they have for her to come along to be where she needed to be in order for the show to progress? If they would’ve just invited her out of the blue, without at least her showing confidence or showing that she can get money…it would seem like it was put on the character to do it as opposed to it coming from [her],” she explains while being interviewed by Perri Nemiroff (Collider). “With the second dance, it earned her a bit more respect from the dancers to then have them invite her, which then cleared a potential plot hole.”
Fishback’s climb in the odds coincides with flagging support for Elisabeth Olsen. The “Love and Death” star is also surging and soon to be the cool new kid on the block when HBO premieres the true-crime drama April 27. Ditto for Ali Wong, who skyrocketed into sixth place after Netflix declared “Beef” a limited series. Fortunately, Fishback, set to begin a promotional tour for summer’s “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” is unlikely to leave the spotlight anytime soon.
All seven 30-minute episodes of “Swarm” are available on Amazon Prime Video.
PREDICT the 2023 Emmy nominees through July 12
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
