‘Swarm’ costume designer Dominique Dawson on the evolution of Dre [Exclusive Video Interview]
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For the team behind the Amazon Prime Video limited series “Swarm,” this year’s Emmy Awards might be best considered “The Dom Show.” Of the three Emmy nominations “Swarm” received, two went to Dominques: Best Movie/Limited Actress for star Dominique Fishback and Contemporary Costumes For A Limited Or Anthology Series Or Movie for costume designer Dominque Dawson. (The show’s other nomination went to co-creators Donald Glover and Janice Nabers for writing.)
“It’s great because it was Dom and Dom,” Dawson tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview as part of our Meet the Experts: Costume Designers panel. Dawson, a first-time Emmy nominee, says she and Fishback just clicked right away and the actress helped Dawson understand the complex nature of Fishback’s character, Dre, a serial murderer who is obsessed with a Beyonce-adjacent pop star.
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“She is so invested in the psychology of her character and she’s very open and articulate and able to really explain her way of digesting the script and her perspective,” Dawson says. “A lot of the discussions that we had were about what’s in Dre’s inner monologue at this certain moment.”
SEEDominique Fishback interview: ‘Swarm’
For instance, Dawson explains, when Dre was going to rob someone’s house or kill someone, there might have been an instinct to dress the character in dark clothes to keep her incognito. “For Dominique, however, she was like, ‘No, I’ve been under the radar for so long. I’m bold. I’m out here. I’m going to wear whatever I want. What empowers me when I go and take care of business?’” Dawson says. “So that opened the floodgates to killing in a catsuit, killing in neon and puffy vests. We really allowed her to play and just finally express herself.”
“Swarm” takes place in a number of locations, including Atlanta, Seattle, and New Orleans, and Dawson says she tried to think about how the cities influenced Dre from a fashion perspective.
“You really get to see her just playing with her identity and trying things on and seeing if it feels right,” Dawson says of the character. “She’s never had this freedom before to self-express in this way. So we had a lot of fun with that. She does super-heightened femininity by being a stripper, but then eventually goes to find her true identity really as a man and her ‘Tony’ identity [in the finale].”
All episodes of “Swarm” are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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