Taylor Swift pulled off an unprecedented cultural and economic event with the Eras Tour, quite literally making history (and $2 billion). Now, she’s giving fans a look at how she did it.
The End of an Era, a new six-episode documentary series chronicling the behind-the-scenes workings of the tour, dropped its first two episodes on Disney+ on Friday, on the eve of the star’s 36th birthday. From the outset, it had a lot of questions to answer, like: What was the deal with the cleaning cart that served as Swift’s transportation to the stage? What went on in the pre-show huddle? And, mainly, how did she pull that whole show off? The Eras Tour’s cinematic sets and scenes, the spectacular dance numbers, the special guests, and the sheer stamina summoned by Swift and her team to put on a three-and-a-half-hour show, spanning years of her career, 149 times—it boggles the mind.
In the end, the Disney+ series presents a love letter to the dancers, backup singers, production crew, musicians, and more who made Swift’s vision come to life, besides offering a view of the emotional high-wire act that Swift did throughout the tour.
“This show created a bonding experience for, like, 70,000 people all at once. There’s something very special about that,” Swift says in the series’ trailer. “I wanted to over-serve the fans in terms of the amount of songs they were gonna hear, and how far I was gonna push myself.”
Watch the trailer below, and read on for the revelations—big and small—that caught our attention in episodes one and two of The End of an Era.
1. The Eras Tour was a family affair
The series shines a spotlight on Swift’s choreographers and backup dancers, including Mandy Moore, Amanda Balen, and Kameron Saunders, and it’s clear that the team has a familial dynamic. Swift says that her friend Emma Stone actually recommended Moore as a choreographer, calling her the best of the best. We also learn about the challenges Saunders faced as a plus-size dancer, and we witness an emotional moment between him and his mom as he describes how her unwavering love made it possible for him to chase his dreams.
2. Travis Kelce always brightens Swift’s mood
We watch as Swift hops on a cute phone call with her fiancé, Travis Kelce, in the car. They discuss the similarities of their jobs. “You got teammates, I got teammates,” he tells her. “You’ve got Coach Reid, I’ve got my mom,” Swift jokes. As they finish up, she seems instantly happier and calmer. Swift says, “Some people get a vitamin drip, I got this conversation.”
3. Even Swift’s friends get a little starstruck sometimes
It’s a joy to watch Florence Welch prepare to join Swift onstage to perform “Florida!!!” in London. “The feeling of coming up for the first time in that lift, it was kind of landing on Mars,” Welch says. “You see this cultural moment from the outside, and I suddenly was inside of it.” She reveals that even she—a major pop star in her own right—felt floored by the experience. “Taylor’s my friend and I know her as this very cozy person, but I came out of that lift, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, it’s fuckin’ Taylor Swift!’”
4. She listens to audiobooks on tour
At one moment in which Swift is having a “very physical reaction” to her nerves—she’s about to play her first show after several were canceled amid a thwarted terrorist plot in Austria and an attack on young children at a Taylor Swift–themed dance class in England—she listens to an audiobook to help center herself. After a little detective work, we think we know what that book was: bestselling thriller The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.
5. The tour was born out of two bad things
Swift says that having her masters sold from under her and going through the pandemic planted the seeds for the Eras Tour. Revisiting her old albums for the “Taylor’s Version” recordings brought her back to the different chapters of her life, and helped her to dream up a tour that would showcase all of them.
6. It took spy-level maneuvering to keep secrets on tour
As Swift says in the doc, she loves having a good secret. When she was secretly working on her album The Tortured Poets Department, she wanted to integrate it into the tour without her fans catching on. We get a glimpse at the maneuvers that helped her keep things under wraps: Rehearsing choreography with no music playing, blocking in a secret hotel ballroom, bandmates rehearsing off of the PA system, and more.
7. She wax-sealed her team’s bonuses by hand
The singer gave her tour team a reported $197 million in bonuses. We see her preparing special notes she’d written for the team, and dripping hot wax over them to seal them herself. She may have risked setting off a smoke detector, but the result was well worth it.