Is ‘Swarm’ Based On A True Story?

At the beginning of almost every episode of the new series Swarm on Prime Video, viewers are informed that what we are about to watch is based on real-life events. “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead, or actual events, is intentional,” we are told, and then, before the first episode begins, the screen says, “Houston, Texas. April 2016.” In the story that follows, a young woman named Dre (Dominique Fishback) goes on a killing spree, primarily targeting anyone who insults her favorite pop star, a singer named Ni’Jah. Dre mentally snaps after her foster sister, Marissa (Chloe Bailey), takes her own life on the same night that Ni’Jah drops a surprise music release called Festival, complete with a visual album, that takes the world by storm.

Is Swarm Based On A True Story?

Swarm creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers have been very clear that Swarm was inspired by Beyoncé and her fan army, the Beyhive, and many of the details about Ni’Jah, directly lead back to Queen Bey. Most obvious is the fact that Ni’Jah’s fan base is called the Swarm, which is just a quick jump from Beyhive. But many of the details about Ni’Jah, an R&B singer from Houston, a multiple-Grammy winner, a mother of twins, are all just pure Beyoncé. Even the fact that Ni’Jah’s surprise album, Festival, dropped in April, 2016, is a reference to the fact that Beyoncé’s Lemonade came out April 23, 2016. But when it comes to Dre, Marissa, and all the murder, even those things are rooted in some truth.

In an interview with Shondaland, co-creator Nabers explained that Marissa’s suicide was inspired by internet rumors circulated about a young woman from Houston named Marissa Jackson who killed herself after listening to Lemonade when it first came out. “In April of 2016, Lemonade was released,” Nabers said. “On the same night, there was a rumor about a woman named Marissa Jackson who committed suicide after watching this visual album because it basically confirmed that a very powerful man was cheating on one of the most incredibly beautiful and successful pop stars of our time. I’m from Houston, Texas, and my very best friend’s last name is Jackson. There was a lot of texting between Houstonians being like, ‘Yo, who is this Marissa Jackson? Is this a true story?’ And that existed on the internet for a while, and people were tweeting really horrible things about this woman who had killed herself and making fun of her.”

And even though Chloe Bailey’s character on Swarm is named Marissa Jackson, there is absolutely no evidence that there was ever a real Jackson, the “truth” that inspired her was purely a viral rumor.

As for Dre, is there actually a Beyoncé superfan who has a murder streak? No. Even though the true-crime documentary in episode 6 of Swarm appears to tell the “true” story of Andrea “Dre” Greene, and even features a meta interview with Donald Glover about her being the inspiration for the very show we’re all watching, she is an amalgam of several real-life stories that Nabers and the show’s writers combined. Nabers told the Los Angeles Times, “We did research for months to basically find events [between 2016 and 2018] that we could put our main character in. So it’s really not a work of fiction. We’ve taken real internet rumors, real murders and combined them in the narrative of our main character, Dre. Not much of it is fabricated.”

Swarm blurs the line between fact and fiction. While, yes, there were rumors that a Marissa Jackson existed, it’s understood that her death was just viral hoax. And while Dre, as portrayed by Fishback, certainly does seem like she could be a real person, given her chilling, dedicated psychosis, she’s not based on any one person. It’s probably safest to say Swarm is loosely based on a few true-ish stories.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.