Dominique Fishback has an open invitation to Collider Ladies Night for a number of reasons. First, she’s incredibly talented and has a wild amount of range. Second, she recognizes that range and uses it by loading up her filmography with a wide variety of projects, all with complex characters that demand she flexes her acting muscles to the fullest. On top of all of that? Not only is it abundantly career that Fishback pours maximum heart and thought into her craft, but she always exudes deep passion when discussing it. There’s no better Collider Ladies Night guest than that.

In her latest see-it-to-believe-it production, Fishback stars as Dre in Prime Video’s Swarm. Dre grew up a massive fan of pop culture icon Ni’Jah. Whereas her sister (Chloe Bailey) grew out of the fandom, Dre’s obsession has intensified and now, as an adult, her dedication to Ni’Jah often sends her to extremely dark, dangerous places.

Whether you’re a singer, an actor, or pursuing any other craft in the entertainment industry, with success often comes celebrity, and with celebrity comes extremely passionate fans. Clearly, Ni’Jah has one in Dre in Swarm, and Fishback’s amassed quite a few over the years as well.

Image via Prime Video

While revisiting her time studying theater at Pace University, Fishback pinpointed one thing that all the schooling in the world never could have prepared her for when she first became a successful professional actor — celebrity. Here’s how she put it:

“The art of being a movie star versus being an actor, I think that’s different, and I think that’s important a lot of times in school because I think they want to ground you in a craft. They say, that’s not important. Fame is unimportant. Celebrity is not important. And maybe it isn’t, but if you ignore it, then maybe you’re not prepared for [it] when it comes.”

Continuing down that path, I asked Fishback for a misconception about fame that she wishes more rising stars knew about. Here’s what she said:

“There’s definitely glamour in the industry. Being an actor is glamorous. You get to wear all these cool things and see all the cool people and go to the premieres and things like that, but also, you do 17-hour days on sets. You sometimes do six-day weeks. Doing Transformers, I’m really in the jungle being afraid of, I don’t know, poison frogs and things that could kill you in an hour. It’s real. It’s acting, but it is real and it does take a toll. So sometimes I think one of the hardest things is we want to act when it says action, but you also end up acting outside of action. Because, let’s say, I’m sad today, something happened, but now you have all these people looking to you to give them a good experience of having met you. And they’re not wrong for wanting that! They’ve admired you, they watched you, they want to feel good about meeting you. And also, you’re a human. So to act on action and then say cut, and then have to act again and make sure a whole swarm of people, no pun intended [laughs], like a whole crew of different people that just want to say hi, and so you try to give them everything that you got and then give everything that you got on screen, and that’s not always easy.”

Image via Warner Bros.

Ever since our very first interview for 2018’s The Hate You Give, Fishback’s always come across as someone who prioritizes growth and working on herself, whether it’s within her career or on a more personal level. A tool she uses to do that? Vision boards. But, this year marked the first time in quite a while that she didn’t complete her annual vision board. She explained:

“For the last about six or seven years, I made a vision board at the end of a year to go into the beginning of the new one. Maybe by like January 3rd, I’m normally finished with it to say, this is it. But for the first time, my vision board, I didn’t finish it, and I didn’t feel compelled to throw stuff on it to beat some kind of time clock. I just was like, you know what? I did this and I’m just gonna wait it out and see. I think I’m more open to not controlling things and letting it flow and seeing what happens. So we’ll see! Maybe next year I’ll go back to it.”

As someone who often views leaving a task incomplete as a failure, Fishback’s willingness to pivot with such a tradition is extremely inspiring. She added, “In other ways, I’m working on myself, so maybe this is the first time with a vision board [where] I will guide the vision board as opposed to the vision board guiding me in some kind of way.”

When it comes to the evolution of her work on set, she’s making great strides by acting on the importance of speaking up and making sure her voice is heard when she identifies something that could change a scene for the better. She explained:

“Ultimately when I feel like I can’t crack a scene it’s because I’m too afraid to advocate, I think, or to just speak and ask a question. I think if it feels like that, the only way to overcome it is to talk about [it]. I feel like that goes in life in general. But if there is a scene and I’m like, it doesn’t work out, but maybe they had already decided that it was gonna be blocked like this and the lights are here and the camera’s here, now you don’t want to be the actor that comes in and [says], ‘That doesn’t really make sense.’ But you have to! And if it doesn’t change, that’s okay. But at least you spoke about it and you don’t have to go sleep being like, did I miss a moment?”

Image via Netflix

Fishback stepped up in an especially big way on Swarm. Two big ways, in fact! She was initially approached for the role of Dre’s sister, Marissa, but Fishback felt a pull to Dre herself and followed her gut by suggesting the role-swap to Swarm co-creator Donald Glover. “Donald’s like, if that’s the role you want, that’s the role you get.” She continued:

“He was like, ‘Well, why do you want that part?’ And I said, ‘Well, as an actor, I never want to catch up to myself.’ I don’t even want to know what I’m gonna do next. I think about myself as a child and watching TV and saying, ‘I want to be a versatile actor, and what does that mean?’ And I have to go to the inner child who wanted to be an actor, who watched Monster with Charlize Theron, who watched Boys Don’t Cry with Hilary Swank, or watched Heath Ledger as The Joker, or whatever it is, and wanting to do character work. And finally being able to get the opportunity to do that was exciting, and it was scary. It was not an easy thing for me to do. Once I got it I was like, ‘Oh man, what did I do? I don’t even know the rest of the series. What am I gonna do?’ And I had to journal myself and identify points that were scary to me, and why. Is it a real fear to me or is it a social idea or social fear that I’m putting on? Like, what is somebody else gonna perceive? What are they gonna think about me? Those type of questions. And if I do that, then essentially I’m allowing myself to get imprisoned by my own artistry and I could not risk the chance to do that, so I had to risk in another way.”

In addition to expressing interest in playing the show’s lead character, Fishback also spoke up about another opportunity she felt would impact the production for the better — having a producing credit on the show.

“[Co-creator] Janine Nabers [asked] me, ‘Well, what do you need in order to do the show?’ And I said, ‘I need to be a producer on the show.’ Because, for me, the type of actor that I’ve always been — and again, I would do the same work regardless of that title, but I know that I contribute a lot to a story, to the characters. I never just care about the arc of my character, I care about the entire project. And so with this one where it was really gonna be Dre, Dre, Dre the whole time, then I knew that I was gonna be putting in a lot of work and a lot of care, and that I’m deserving. I deserve it! And that was something that I had to [be] like, ‘Oh, you don’t want to ask that. Stop playing small.’ It’s like, we have one life to live here, might as well do it big. Do it big or go home, baby!”

Eager to hear even more about how Fishback’s craft has evolved and how she’s continuing to go big in film and television? Be sure to check out her latest episode of Collider Ladies Night in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the full conversation uncut in podcast form below: