SPOILERS are ahead for Swarm, now streaming with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Months before Billie Eilish wrote a hit song for the biggest movie of the year, Barbie, the famous singer also made her TV debut in Amazon’s Swarm, in an absolutely delicious guest role. Eilish got to play the head of a culty female empowerment collective that Dominque Fishback’s Dre meets on her unsettling journey to see her favorite artist live. Now that fans have had a chance to see Eilish’s queer (and very eerie) role in Swarm, she is sharing her thoughts about their reactions.
Billie Eilish can be found halfway into Swarm, in an episode called “Running Scared.” In the episode, Dre finds solace with a group of women lead by Eva (Eilish) ahead of her plans to attend the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee. Eilish gets to play the “bad guy” of the episode who ends up getting run over by Dre after giving off some seriously creepy vibes. Here’s how she reflected on the role:
It’s so fucked up and classic. This hippie, white bitch is gaslighting this Black girl, and then reaches out and grabs one of her fucking braids. She’s telling me she’s murdered all these people, and instead of me being like, ‘Oh my God, you’re so fucked up,’ I’m tearing up and saying that she’s a warrior, and holding her hands and getting close to her and playing with her braid and leaning in. We wanted this upsetting, weird, seductive, sexual-but-also-not power dynamic. Eva’s reaction to all of it, somehow, is to kiss her.
Billie Eilish is a horror fan herself who has not shied away from approaching dark subjects in her songs and music videos, but Swarm gave her the opportunity to play someone completely different than herself and work with some notable talent. Along with sharing scenes with Fishback, the show was created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers of Atlanta. (Fun fact: former President Obama’s daughter Malia Obama was even a staff writer on it!) As Eilish continued to Variety:
Some of the fans have talked about how they love Eva [and think she’s] so comforting. Guys, no! It’s a front! She wants the worst of the worst! And that happens where people bring you in and make you feel comfortable and safe, and then they abuse the shit out of that. … That fan passion is so real, and it’s so beautiful, but it’s also really scary. And I think the show is a metaphor for this power — how people really are in the delusional nature of, ‘She’s gonna see me and we’re gonna be best friends!’ Fans are really, so powerful, and I think maybe they don’t realize how powerful they are.
Eilish has read some of the comments about her role in the Swarm cast and she is not good with people calling Eva “comforting” when she was clearly not a good person. The character was even inspired by the NXIVM cult, which sold itself as a self-help corporation before it devolved into a very dangerous operation that was later exposed to be involved in sex-trafficking, among its many wrongdoings. Check out one pivotal scene from Eilish’s appearance on the show:
Swarm was an especially apt series for Billie Eilish to be in because of the ways in which the show comments on stan culture. Its main character spends the season being obsessive over seeing her favorite singer to the point of committing acts of violence. Not only does her role have something to say about society, but she pulled a really incredible performance that has us hoping she’ll return to acting soon!
