Malia Obama Developing Short Film For Donald Glover’s Production Company

Malia Obama is currently developing a short film for Donald Glover’s production company, Gilga. During a new GQ cover story, Glover revealed that the eldest daughter of former president Barack Obama is teaming up with the company. Malia was already part of the writer’s room of Glover’s recent Amazon Prime Video series, Swarm.

As for Malia’s own film, Glover warned her that the stakes are higher for someone of her status. “The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once,” Glover said. “You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.” Glover didn’t go on to reveal any plot details about Malia’s new short film.

Malia Obama In Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 25: Malia Obama is seen on January 25, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Bellocqimages/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

Fam Udeorji, Glover’s longtime collaborator and his creative partner at Gilga, also told the outlet: “Understanding somebody like Malia’s cachet means something. But we really wanted to make sure she could make what she wanted—even if it was a slow process…It’s more about diversity of thought than just, like, diversity for optics. You know what I mean?”

Glover also discussed his goals for Gilga as a whole. “Rich kids don’t do shit for money. They do things based on if it’s gonna make them happy,” he said. “Like, that’s really what I realized this last go-around. I made a lot of money, and it wasn’t that I was depressed or anything like that, but I realized it’s the people I was around that mattered. It’s the food I was able to eat. It’s the processes I was a part of that made me happy. People don’t get quality anymore and they need a filter. Gilga is a perfect filter for that shit.”

Elsewhere in Glover’s interview with GQ, he discussed negative reactions to the third season of Atlanta, his time at 30 Rock, being rejected by Saturday Night Live, and more. The first season of his Amazon series, Swarm, is streaming on the platform now.

[Via]

Donald Glover Says Jordan Peele Convinced Liam Neeson To Appear In “Atlanta”

Atlanta got progressively weirder as the series progressed. It certainly isn’t a bad thing but it also created some polarizing moments. There was Kevin Samuels’ posthumous appearance that led to a significant backlash, though Donald Glover’s brother and show co-creator, Stephen Glover, said that they weren’t aware of his controversial takes. However, it felt a bit hard to believe that statement after Liam Neeson’s appearance in, “New Jazz.” During the episode, he apologized for the racist 2019 comments he made as a fictionalized version of himself.

The scene nearly didn’t go down, according to Donald Glover. “When I got in touch with him, Liam poured his heart out,” Glover told GQ. “He was like, ‘I am embarrassed. I don’t know about this. I’m trying to get away from that.’ And I was like, ‘Man, I’m telling you, this will be funny! And you’ll actually get a lot of cream from it because it’ll show you’re sorry’…So, he asked me to let him think about it. Then he sent me an email saying, ‘I don’t think I can do it and best of luck with Atlanta, blah-blah-blah.’”

Jordan Peele Helps Secure Liam Neeson Cameo

Glover recalled Neeson saying that he spoke to Morgan Freeman, Spike Lee, and Jordan Peele after the incident. “I hit Jordan Peele up and I was like, Look, man, I got this idea. He said that he trusted you. Tell him it’s a good idea!…Jordan thought it was hilarious! So Jordan talked to him. Liam hit me back and said he talked to Jordan and his son and thought it’d actually be a good thing,” Glover recalled.

However, Donald Glover didn’t inform Peele that the Gangs Of New York actor agreed to appear in Atlanta. Ultimately, the Get Out director believed that Glover pranked him into forgiving Neeson. “But what was so funny is, like, I forgot to hit Jordan back,” Glover continued. I was so excited about Liam doing it. So Jordan hit a friend of mine, and was like, ‘Am I on a prank show where Donald got me to forgive Liam Neeson? Was this a joke…on me?’”

[Via]

Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ Lawsuit Was Dismissed Over An ‘Entirely Different’ Song

Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) has officially had a lawsuit against his 2018 song, “This Is America,” dismissed. In 2021, Kidd Wes (real name Emelike Nwosuocha) sued Glover and claimed that the track was “practically identical” to his 2016 track, “Made In America.”

However, according to Billboard, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled yesterday (March 24) that there is no reasoning and tossed the lawsuit.

“A cursory comparison with the challenged composition reveals that the content of the choruses is entirely different and not substantially similar,” Marrero wrote. He claimed that Nwosuocha’s words were a “short, simple, self-aggrandizing proclamation” and Glover‘s were on “what America means and how it is perceived.”

“More could be said on the ways these songs differ, but no more airtime is needed to resolve this case,” he added.

Nwosuocha’s attorneys, Imran H. Ansari and La’Shawn N. Thomas, offered a statement to the publication about how their client felt about the ruling, citing that he was “understandably disappointed.”

“He stands by his music, creativity, and the independence of grassroots artists to create their own music, and receive credit where credit is due, without the fear of it being apportioned by another,” they shared.

His team has also noted that they aren’t ruling out appealing the decision, but only time will tell.

Trevor Jackson Defends “Grown-ish” Co-Star Chlöe’s “Swarm” Sex Scene

Donald Glover scored himself another successful hit with Swarm. Dominique Fishback is stellar in the lead role of Dre, an obsessed fan who embarks on a crazy journey as she stalks her favorite pop star. The series is said to be inspired by Beyoncé’s dedicated BeyHive fanbase, but that has been argued. Meanwhile, it isn’t just the cameos and star-studded cast that has caused Swarm to become a hot topic; Chlöe and Damson Idris’s raunchy sex scene made for naughty memes on social media.

In a scene, the singer and Snowfall star were having intercourse, albeit Chlöe was face down in a doggy-style position. Some found it amusing and cracked jokes, others were a tad hot under the collar, but a select few criticized the “Have Mercy” singer. Chlöe emerged with her sister Halle Bailey as songbirds who were Beyoncé’s muses. Critics believed Chlöe was straying from the ‘good girl’ persona she’s carried throughout her career. Despite the pushback, the singer’s Grown-ish co-star Trevor Jackson defended her against naysayers.

Chlöe & Damson Idris Were Performing Art

Fans may be taking things a bit too seriously, suggests Jackson. He was stopped by TMZ and questioned about the singer’s recent scene. “I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s art,” he said. “And I support Chlöe in any and everything that she does. He added, “She’s an amazing person, and she’s an artist. She can do whatever she wants, whatever she feels led to do. It’s her life, and she’ll always have my support every time.”

When Chlöe first began teasing her solo career, she faced backlash from people who believed she was being too sexy. Some saw it as performative, others thought she was trying too hard. However, the criticisms seemed more about how they saw the singer, not how she saw herself. Chlöe has repeatedly defended her forms of expression, and with each new sizzling release, she storms the charts. Further, she’s readying for the arrival of her debut solo album, In Pieces. The project is slated for arrival on March 31 through Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records. Watch Trevor Jackson defend Chlöe above.

Donald Glover Doesn’t Even Try To Understand Stan Culture In ‘Swarm’

Swarm would have made an excellent movie and an even better SNL sketch (or…). It’s got a stinging (sorry) premise: What if one of those zany online stans really carried out their constant threats against anyone who dares to criticize their favorite artists? After all, there’s just enough of a hint of real-world danger – online doxxing and stalkers showing up at celebrities’ homes – that a satire of stan culture is not only timely but also arguably needed in the current climate.

But Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’ seven-episode Amazon Prime Video miniseries misses its opportunity to really make a decisive artistic statement about the subject. Instead, it pursues the appearance of art, opting to focus on style and head-scratching creative diversions in surreality rather than substance. In doing so, it stretches the kernel of creative potential in its premise into a format that could have worked – but only with someone else at the helm.

In the show, Dominique Fishback – who gives an out-of-this-world lead performance — plays Dre, a Houston woman whose superfandom of Beyoncé stand-in Ni’Jah makes social interaction difficult for her. Initially, Dre presents as a kind of a tabula rasa, which could be useful for projections of crazed standom. After all, these folks often send their bee emoji-laden jabs from the safety of anonymity, using aliases and sock puppet accounts to protect their identities from their obviously problematic behaviors.

That’s why we’re mostly left to guess their motivations. Who are they? Why do they do these things? What are their lives like? Are they dealing with unprocessed trauma? Are they just sociopaths? Dre functions in the story as kind of a repository for the possible answers to those questions, but because of this, she comes across as flat – at least, at first. Dre lives and works with Marissa, her “sister” who shares a love of Ni’Jah, but several orders of magnitude less intense (she’s played by Beyoncé protege Chloe Bailey, who is often on the receiving end of stan backlash, most recently over this very show).

When tragedy strikes, Dre makes an unconscionable decision that forces her to go on the run, adopting a string of false identities and temporary occupations across the nation. At the same time, she takes on a new mission: To defend Ni’Jah from online critics and trolls by any means necessary – which usually involves blunt force trauma to the cranium.

Along the way, a variety of cleverly cast guest stars including Billie Eilish, Paris Jackson, and the incomparable Cree Summer (hell, this show is worth it just for getting Cree’s actual face on TV again) get pulled into Dre’s orbit, prompting them to ponder her ever-present question: “Who’s your favorite artist?” The first four episodes play this way — about two hours of the show — which is why it seems like perhaps this could have been a movie instead.

If this sounds a lot like another buzzy murder-a-week mystery show, that’s because Poker Face operates on a similar premise, only in reverse. In that show, human lie detector Charlie (played by the delightful Natasha Lyonne) bounces from small town to small town taking cash jobs and solving murders. To be honest, if Swarm were a howdunit like this involving Dre just trying to lay low and blend in while getting close to her targets and working out angles for retribution, I’d have written one happy review.

Instead, the show crashes in the fifth episode, losing all its momentum and starting to veer irretrievably into the deepest valleys of its campy concept. Instead of continuing to unravel the character of Dre through her encounters with possible victims or would-be acquaintances, the show returns her to Houston for a confrontation with her past – one that fails to reveal anything truly interesting about the character, her motivations, or her internal world.

The penultimate episode attempts to do that excavation but from the perspective of a new character – and a new show format – that seems tonally inconsistent from what’s gone before. This is a Donald Glover trademark, which he employed in his prior prestige show Atlanta. I know a lot of people find those detours endearing and smart; I always felt they were kind of pretentious and smug.

Sure, it’s groundbreaking, but sometimes I wonder if Glover just gets bored and throws in one of these episodes to troll the audience. I’ve got a sense of humor, but with all the hundreds of other options for entertainment, challenging me to turn off your show and choose one of them is probably going to result in me doing just that. But there’s still one more episode of Swarm to get through: The finale.

Suffice it to say that in pursuing Glover’s typical narrative carelessness, the ending of this tale disappoints. It doesn’t satisfactorily wrap up Dre’s story, and it doesn’t deliver a solid thesis. It handwaves the audience’s concerns, leaving us to “figure it out” after refusing to give us enough solid information to do so. Ultimately, the show has no opinion on stans; it doesn’t know whether they are pathetic, whether they deserve empathy, whether they are just pranksters everyone takes too seriously, or serial killers just waiting for the right trigger.

It’s clear that a lot of craft and care went into the early episodes. They’re shot on film, and many scenes have such striking compositions that I literally went to sleep and dreamed about how beautiful this show looks. And the directors pull some truly magnificent performances out of Fishback and many of the guest stars. But Swarm eventually gets caught between style and substance, and given its creators, the former is going to win every time (this is America, y’all).

The ways in which Dre’s character fills in toward the end of the show are pat and staid. The revelations about her past are predictable and don’t truly explain her standom — or why that standom turns into full-blown psychotic rage. Dre’s mission gets muddied; is she a stan overzealously defending her Queen, or is she a traumatized sister lashing out at an unfathomable loss? And what does her journey actually say about the wider culture of standom?

We never see her engage with the Hyve (ha) as a whole, save for one episode that references that “Sanaa Lathan supposedly bit Beyoncé at a party” incident, and even then, her experience with the broader collective is solely through the screen of her phone. We never get the chance to contrast her behavior with any other example of the species to learn if she’s representative or beyond the pale. Instead, we get a cut-and-dry serial killer narrative that seemingly wants us to feel a little sorry for her, even as she makes wild, unexplained transitions and continues to commit ghastly murders.

The part of all this that makes Swarm especially disappointing is that there’s another name attached: Janine Nabers. Because Glover’s name is naturally going to take top billing in most folks’ minds, Nabers’ contributions have been getting overshadowed in so much of the discussion taking place about the show. And because they’re billed as co-creators, it’s impossible to attribute the show’s issues and triumphs to one or the other. Is Nabers the real genius, hamstrung by attachment to the figurehead who doubles as an albatross, or were her ideas the ones that kept this flight of fancy so earthbound?

Unlike the questions that the show itself posits but refuses to unpack, answers may be forthcoming. Glover’s got a handful of other projects to look forward to. Nabers has productions in the works with both Amazon and HBO (hacking drama Syd at the former and a sports comedy with Insecure showrunner Prentice Penny at the latter). So, we’ll soon see how Nabers fares on her own. Fortunately for both, they shouldn’t have to worry about those pesky stans at their next gigs.

Malia Obama Pitched “Wild” Stories For “Swarm,” Earns Praise From Chlöe & Dominique Fishback

She has received her first official taste as a screenwriter, and Malia Obama is being praised for her contributions to Swarm. Donald Glover previously revealed that the former First Daughter would enter Hollywood with a career far from her parents’ political endeavors. He was excited to collaborate with the 24-year-old, and finally, Obama saw her name in the credits. Janine Nabers helped Glover create Swarm, and the showrunner told Entertainment Tonight, “[‘Girl, Bye’] is probably one of the wildest episodes.” She also stated, “I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people. It’s pretty dope. I’m really proud of it.”

“Some of her pitches were wild as hell, and they were just so good and so funny,” Nabers said of Obama. The two women wrote the “Girl Bye” episode together. “She’s an incredible writer. She brought a lot to the table… She’s really, really dedicated to her craft.” Nabers also said Obama “just folded into [the group]” with ease. “I’m really excited for everyone to get to know her work, and the work of the writers on a show.” The sentiments were echoed by Dominique Fishback, who delivered a stellar performance in the lead role of Dre. Her character is the obsessed fan of a Pop icon.

Chlöe & Dominique Fishback Are Proud Of Malia Obama

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 14: (L-R) Dominique Fishback, Donald Glover, Chloe Bailey, Janine Nabers, and Damson Idris attend the “Swarm” Red Carpet Premiere and Screening in Los Angeles at Lighthouse Artspace LA on March 14, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Arnold Turner/Getty Images for Prime Video)

“It was nice to know that she was going to be on it. And that we had different voices and different generations involved in making the show,” said Fishback. “It was pretty cool to meet her. I think she’s dope.” Meanwhile, Chlöe met the Obama sisters many years ago, so reuniting with Malia was refreshing. “It was always so fun and exciting getting to run into Malia and Sasha years prior,” said the “Have Mercy” songbird. “Having that relationship with Mrs. Obama and getting to meet her daughters… I was always so honored, and they always felt like my family in my head.”

“Getting to see Malia now” is the reunion that Chlöe didn’t expect, but she realizes she needed. “Us both growing into who we are as young women and making our own mark; her as an incredible writer and me making my mark as an entertainer and an actress. It was really fun. I was just so excited when I actually got to see her on set. I’m just so proud of her.”

Donald Glover’s Recognition

When it was revealed that Malia Obama would be working on the show last year, Glover called her an “amazing talented person.” He added, “She’s really focused, and she’s working really hard. I feel like she’s just somebody who’s gonna have really good things coming soon… Her writing style is great.”

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Donald Glover’s Real-Life Hookup Story Inspired A Memorable Scene From ‘Swarm’

Donald Glover doesn’t need to write a memoir about his personal life. He already has Swarm. Janine Nabers, who co-created the Amazon Prime Video series about stan culture, told Insider that a memorable scene from the sexy show was inspired by something that actually happened to Glover.

“Donald told this funny story about a girl who he really liked, and how after they hooked up, he was standing there with a bowl of cherries, just being like, ‘Hey.’ She was, like, so not into it, because it’s so weird to hook up with a guy that you barely know and then wake up with him holding a bowl of cherries,” she said. Something similar (but with a different fruit) happens in Swarm:

In the scene, Dre (Dominique Fishback) wakes up after having lost her virginity to a random man (Rory Culkin) she met at a bar. To her surprise, the man is naked, washing a bowl of strawberries. He then walks over to her and offers her some fruit, with the glass bowl pressed directly against his flaccid penis.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Swarm writers room when they debated whether the hookup should be holding cherries, like Glover did in real life, or strawberries. No one voted for a banana. Too obvious.

Swarm is available on Amazon Prime Video now.

(Via Insider)