Three years after the mass casualty incident at the infamous Astroworld festival, survivors are speaking out about what they think of Travis Scott now.
Netflix’s Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy, which premiered on Tuesday, June 10, featured interviews from survivors of the crowd surge, families of the victims and members of the Houston Police Department. Several of the festival goers admitted that their thoughts on Scott, 34, have changed after seeing how he handled the aftermath of the deadly tragedy.
“My love for Travis was definitely at one point boiling hot. But now hate is a strong word,” Arturo, who had a health scare at the concert, admitted in the documentary. “But I just can’t support that anymore.”
In November 2021, Scott was performing at NRG Park in Houston, Texas, when the crowd surged toward the stage. The rush left 10 people dead and more than 100 injured. Scott initially broke his silence on the tragedy one day after his concert.
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“I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night. My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival,” he tweeted at the time. “Houston PD has my total support as they continue to look into the tragic loss of life.
Arturo slammed Scott’s initial response to the deaths at the Astroworld festival, adding, “It was like a slap in the face to me and to everyone who suffered. It wasn’t really [genuine], it was like he made it because he had to.”
Another documentary participant had the same thought. “‘Oh, well. I’m sorry, guys. Catch you at the next one.’ That’s what the vibes were to me,” she said, while a third survivor noted, “It just looked bad. It looked really bad and you didn’t look like a superhero like you once did.”
Scott later elaborated via his Instagram Stories that he didn’t know the “severity of the situation” until the show was over.
“I just want to send out prayers to all the ones that was lost last night,” he said in a video. “We’re actually working right now [on] how to identify the families so we can help the system through this tough time … We’ve been working closely with everyone to try to get to the bottom of this.”
In a December 2021 YouTube video, Scott claimed he was unaware of the nature of the attendees’ injuries because he couldn’t see the entire crowd from the stage.
“And even at that moment, you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ People pass out, things happen at concerts, but something like that [is different],” he said during a discussion with Charlamagne tha God. “It’s so crazy because I’m that artist too — anytime you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show. You want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need. Anytime I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it a couple times to just make sure everybody was OK. And I really just go off the fans’ energy as a collective — call and response. I just didn’t hear that. You can only help what you can see and whatever you’re told, whenever they tell you to stop, you stop.”
Several people who attended the event and survived revealed in Netflix’s doc how their lives have changed since the tragedy.
“For the first time in my life, I felt like true depression and true anxiety,” Arturo continued. “Because I didn’t think I was more deserving of other people to make it out. Why me and why not them?”
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Meanwhile, Ayden, who was at Astroworld with Brianna Rodriguez before she died, admitted he struggled in the aftermath, saying, “I was 18 years old when it happened. My life has completely changed from that moment. Just the fact that Bri passed away put me down a dark depression. If I was gonna go to school, it was because I was gonna play basketball. I just gave up on it all.”
He continued: “I think about that day all the time. What I did too slow, or what I wish I did first, when I relive that moment, trying to change my actions and hoping for a different outcome. But it’s always the same outcome. It could have been preventable.”
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy featured an interview with crowd safety expert Scott Davidson, who detailed his investigation into the incident.
“In the months afterwards, [event promoter] Live Nation got in touch with me. I knew the venue. I knew the event. I knew the politics and I could quickly make sense of what happened,” he explained. “I was given text messages between executives to emails, documentation and site plans. There were thousands of photographs and videos — all of which have been made public.”
Davidson referred to the Astroworld tragedy as “not an accident,” adding, “It was an inevitability due to the lack of foresight and the abandonment of basic safety protocols. Live Nation reportedly sold 50,000 tickets to the festival. But these tickets were sold before they’d worked out how this number would be able to safely view Travis’s set. Following the tragedy, experts for the plaintiffs examined the evidence and believed that they were viewing capacity for just 35,000 concertgoers at the main stage. Which would mean they planned for many thousands more people than could safely view Travis’s performance.”
The expert also pointed out how earlier in the day, a rush of people without tickets stormed the event.
“The moment they lost control of the gates, there’s now an unknown number of people at the festival. In the days leading up to the event, we can actually see text messages between key members of this management team expressing 50,000 people are not going to fit here. They knew this was going to be an issue,” Davidson added. “So not only was Travis’s stage in danger of being over capacity, this poorly designed site led to people approaching the stage from the side and getting trapped in an area where they were crushed, unable to breathe.”
He continued: “All 10 fatalities were caused by compression asphyxiation in this area. Further text messages sent just minutes before Travis got on stage show that Live Nation was aware of the tragedy that was unfolding. But they failed to act before it was too late. In all the failures of Astroworld, a common denominator is a failure to speak truth to power. There were many missed opportunities to speak up. Somebody to raise their hand and say, ‘Time out. This doesn’t make sense. We’re gonna hurt somebody.’”
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Live Nation released a statement featured in the documentary, which read, “The sellable capacity for the venue was set by SMG Global and approved by the Houston Fire Department (HFD) before tickets went on sale. The number of tickets sold, and attendees on site did not exceed the approved capacity. HFD, SMG Global, and the Houston Police Department (HPD) were aware of the event plans, which were developed in line with safety codes. The Festival Safety & Risk Director and HPD representatives agreed to and executed an early show stop.”
The documentary noted that in 2023 a Houston grand jury found that no individual was criminally responsible for the deaths at Astroworld. All 10 wrongful death lawsuits against Live Nation, Scott and other defendants were settled out of court for undisclosed monetary amounts.
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy also highlighted how Scott broke records in 2024 with “the highest-selling solo rap concert tour of all time, generating over $210 million. It was produced by Live Nation.” Scott did not speak out in the doc or provide a statement, but he has publicly reflected on the tragedy previously.
“That moment for families, for the city, you know, it was devastating,” Scott shared in an interview for GQ’s 28th annual Men of the Year issue in November 2023. “Making music, you think about things that go on in life and things that happen in your life, and you dial in on things.”
Scott recalled feeling “overly devastated” in the aftermath. “I always think about it. Those fans were like my family. You know, I love my fans to the utmost … You just feel for those people. And their families,” he said about how he still has “pain too” about the lives lost. “I want to find change in the things, to make things better, make myself better.”
He concluded: “I have concerns, things that I think about, and the things I see on a day-to-day basis I think about them. And every day I want to find change in the things, to make things better, make myself better. It’s just like: I go through things like everyone else. And even recently through something I never could imagine.”
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy is streaming on Netflix.
