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It doesntnotlook like Beyonce, except you know Beyonce would never wear a wig this bad.
The lips are closed, and they are glossy.
The gaze is fixed, and it is dead, dead, dead.
And we cant really tell: Did they make Beyonce orange?
Or is it just the shit lighting at the Hollywood Madame Tussauds?
Dominique Fishback stepped back to appraise.
To wax Marlene Dietrich: I dont know her.
To wax Vivien Leigh: My girl!
The show begins in 2016 and NiJah is … familiar.
She drops a visual album.
Her rapper husband fights her sister in an elevator.
Someone bites her at a party.
Her fans call themselves the Swarm.
Lost in grief, she fixates on meeting NiJah and becomes convinced the star needs protection from the haters.
Soon, Dre starts killing people who insult NiJah.
A lot of them.
If Dre is Odysseus, NiJah is Ithaca, a dream of safety she can barely articulate.
Fishback plays that longing like a broken, bloody homesickness.
Early interviews could sound like everyone was workshopping how to not talk about Beyonce.
One might assume the show has Beys seal of approval, even if no one will confirm it.
As we gazed upon wax Bey, I asked Fishback the obvious.
A flash of frustration crossed her face.
I mean, its not her, she said.
Its an alternate universe where NiJah has done similar things to what Beyonce has done.
I had to be present, she said, and let her have her one main objective.
That being to meet NiJah?
To be with the one person thats going to make her feel like she has somebody, said Fishback.
She was crazy forLiar LiarandSister, Sisterand Aaliyah and Eminem.
She still knows the whole last verse to Stan.
Its like, maybe I manifested this over how hard I used to sing that.
By the time Fishback was 8, she knew she wanted to be an actor.
There was a kids theater group shed heard about; maybe she could do that?
She tried out once, twice, three times nothing.
I walked through East New York, and I was crying my heart out.
Crying my heart out.
That familiarity, the promise to handle it: Thats East New York to her.
The fact that she didnt get into LaGuardia made me the artist I am, she said.
Im thankful I wasnt a child star.
She rolled her eyes to one side and grinned.
I would probably have been a littlewildone, maybe.
If Fishback was going to do this, she wanted the hard part.
She insisted, and Glover agreed.
Then she started spiraling a little bit.Why did I ask for this?
It was the darkness that gave her pause.
Fishback has witnessed violence in real life.
Fishback was one of the people to call the ambulance.
After that, she started going to therapy.
I realize you dont need a big reason to go, she said.
For me, thankfully, Im aware things I dont even remember happening are affecting me to this day.
Fishback also journals and has sometimes prepared for roles by writing in character.
I couldnt connect the threads psychologically.
She wanted it to be the same for Dre.
But it never is.
Glover said they purposefully did not talk to Fishback about her characters backstory.
I kept telling her, Youre not regular people.
You dont have to find the humanity in your character.
Thats the audiences job, he said.
He acknowledged that made it harder for her: She really was lost a lot of the time.
He said he told Fishback, Think of it more like an animal and less like a person.
Actors in general, they want to get layered performances.
And I dont think Dre is that layered, he told me.
I wanted her performance to be brutal.
Its a raw thing.
We find out quick.
I usually do the killing.
She and Idris ran through the beats of the scene.
She asked a close friend to join her, too.
They sat together at a table for a while, talking and praying.
Then she got out there and whacked Khalid with a salt lamp.
When Fishback and I made it out of Madame Tussauds, the sun was high in the sky.
she said, stopping short.
This is the first time Im seeing me!
It was a poster forSwarm,pasted on a wall across the street.
Thats her, I said to one of them.
I know, he said and turned to Fishback.
You kill me on the show.
she said and turned to me.
This is the boyfriend in the second episode!
(He plays a character named Sir whom Dre bludgeons with a dumbbell.)
Fishback, excited, asked, Can you teach me how to skateboard?
As Mills stood behind her, she stepped gingerly onto the board.
With one foot, she gave herself a gentle push and went Wheee!
Too gentle: The board barely made it from one sidewalk star to another.
Fishback laughed as Mills picked up the board and carried it over to her to have another go.
She ran back, got into position, grabbed his hand, and got ready.
All good, she said.
I just gotta get a little more momentum.
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