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Dominique Fishback therapist swarm

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Dominique Fishback’s request for a therapist on Swarm‘s set was a step towards humanizing actors.

The actress opened up about her therapy experience while filming during an appearance on Way Up With Angela Yee. The 32-year-old said she asked for a therapist on Swarm’s set “because you don’t know how people are going to be triggered.” The Brooklyn native’s request for a mental health professional was for herself, her fellow actors and the project’s crew.

In the show, Fishback plays a superfan named Dre whose obsession with her favorite singer leads to gruesome murders.

The actress said that she and the on-set therapist “talked sometimes” about the show or other things. Fishback also revealed that she spoke with a personal therapist too. 

“We all know the schedule for shooting is not consistent. So how do you make room for your mental health while you’re shooting? Because at the end of the day, everyone’s going to move on. The director’s going to go on and do something else, but the actor is going to be left with whatever they took from a character.”

“We have to make time and space for actors to be human and be taken care of while they’re doing the work,” Fishback emphasized. 

 

A difficult day of shooting on a previous project is what influenced Fishback’s perspective on mental health while filming.

The star recalled her time on set of the 2021 crime drama Judas and the Black Messiah.

“The day we shot the assassination scene it was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Jim and Fred. So energetically it was very heavy. I remember the night before the scene I felt so anxious. I felt something bad was going to happen… I realized my body couldn’t differentiate from what I made my mind believe.”

Fishback said in an interview with Complex that she wanted to be “conscious and aware” of how acting could trigger people on Swarm’s set. The star mentioned her heightened sensitivity was “to make sure people could go home in one piece and feel at peace as much as possible.”

In January 2023, the Los Angeles Times reported that more entertainment producers are considering therapy options for their cast and crew, especially in the U.K. The outlet specified that the pandemic and heightened demands from streaming services added extra stressors to film and TV sets.

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