Taylor Swift breaks down crying in the first episode of her new, six-part Disney+ docuseries, “Taylor Swift: The End of an Era,” while reflecting on some of the “violent, scary things” that happened during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour.
“This is more than a tour. It’s like a force to be reckoned with in global culture,” Swift remarks early in the doc’s first installment, noting, “Never in my life did I think we would have a terrorist plot.” The docuseries then dives into the thwarted terror plot that forced Swift to cancel three of her planned Eras Tour shows in Vienna in August 2024.
That same month, three suspects were arrested in connection with the plot, which aimed to use Swift’s planned shows at Austria’s Ernst Happel Stadium to kill thousands of fans with knives and handmade explosives. Swift canceled three of her Vienna shows as a result of the conspiracy and moved on to her run of concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium.
“It’s just kind of a weird feeling going into these last five shows in Europe because it sort of feels like we’ve done like 128 shows so far, but this is the first one where I feel like, I don’t know, I’m skating on thin ice or something,” Swift reflects in “The End of an Era,” while preparing for her first Wembley performance.
“We’ve had a series of very violent, scary things happen to the tour. We dodged, like, a massacre situation, and so I’ve just been kind of all over the place,” the “Shake It Off” and “Anti-Hero” songwriter admitted. As Swift grew more emotional and reflective, she also touched on the tragic deaths of three young fans who were killed in a fatal stabbing attack in Southport, England, in July 2024, while attending a Swift-themed dance and yoga class.
“There was this horrible attack in Liverpool at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party, and it was little kids that–” Swift began, before breaking down into tears. After a few moments, she whispered, “I have a hard time explaining it.”
“I’m gonna meet some of these families tonight and … put on a pop concert, you know?” she said through tears. “I’m gonna be fine because, when I meet them, I’m not gonna do this. I swear to God. I’m not gonna do this. I’m gonna be smiling. So any of this gets out of the way before you ever go on stage. You lock it off. Three and half hours, they don’t have to worry about you.”
“It’s like you’re a pilot flying the plane, and if you were like, ‘Oh, there’s turbulence up ahead. I don’t know if we’re actually gonna land in Dallas. I’m gonna try hard, but I don’t know if I can actually figure out how to land through this turbulence,’” Swift explained. “Everyone on the plane is gonna freak out. You just have to have a calm, cool, collected tone.”
“From a mental standpoint, being afraid that something’s gonna happen to your fans at any moment, this is a new challenge,” the singer added later in the episode. “I want to keep all of the nerves I have away from the crowd, because when you’re sort of the ringleader of this show, they can sense any kind of shift energetically in you. You have to really focus on that and factor that in.”
Before her first London show, Swift told her mother Andrea she felt “twitchy and fidgety.” Additionally, while “The End of an Era” does not show any of Swift’s meetings with the survivors and victims’ families of the U.K. attack, the doc does briefly show her crying backstage after one such meeting. In the aftermath of the visit, her mother is shown comforting the pop star, telling her, “I know you helped them. I know it doesn’t seem like it. But I know you helped them.”
Ahead of the Wembley show, Swift was also shown rehearsing with special guest and longtime friend Ed Sheeran, to whom she confessed that she needed to “remember the joy” of performing again, in the wake of so much tragedy. After the successful concert, Swift told her then-boyfriend, now-fiancé Travis Kelce over the phone, “I’m so happy. I’m so happy to be back doing this in a functional way.”
The first two episodes of “Taylor Swift: The End of an Era” are streaming now on Disney+. The docuseries’ remaining four installments are set to premiere two at a time over the next two weeks. An accompanying concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — The Final Show” also began streaming Friday on Disney+.
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