Taylor Swift broke down in her Eras Tour docuseries while reflecting on a foiled terror attack at her concert and the “horrible” fatal stabbings of three of her young fans.
The pop star, 35, opened up about the devastating events during the first episode of The End of an Era, which premiered on Disney+ on Friday, December 12.
“It’s just kind of a weird feeling going into these last five shows in Europe,” she told the camera from her London hotel room. “We’ve done, like, 128 shows so far, but this is the first one where I feel like I’m skating on thin ice or something. We’ve had a series of very violent, scary things happen to the tour — like, we dodged a massacre situation, so I’ve just been kind of all over the place.”
Swift brought her record-breaking Eras Tour to venues around the world from March 2023 to December 2024. While performing throughout Europe in the summer of 2024, Swift endured back-to-back tragedies.
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First, a group of young fans attending a Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England, in July 2024 were attacked by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, who fatally stabbed three girls: Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. Rudakubana also injured eight other girls ranging in age from 7 to 13, as well as the teacher of the class and a local businessman who intervened. In January, Rudakubana was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison.
“It was little kids,” Swift noted in the docuseries before choking up. “I’m gonna, like, meet some of these families tonight and put on a pop concert, you know? It’s gonna be fine because I’m not gonna do this [cry]. I swear to God, I’m not gonna do this. I’m gonna be smiley. So any of this gets out of the way before you ever go on stage. You lock it off. [For] three and a half hours, they don’t have to worry about you.”
She continued, “You’re like 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.’ Everyone on the plane is going to freak out. You just have to have a calm, cool, collected tone of like, ‘We will be landing in Dallas at 6:05 p.m. Got a little turbulence up ahead, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Just keep your seatbelts fastened, and welcome to The Eras Tour!’”
After the attack, Swift shared her condolences in an emotional statement via her Instagram Story.
“The horror of yesterday’s attack in Southport is washing over me continuously, and I’m just completely in shock … The loss of life and innocence and the horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families and first responders,” she wrote at the time. “These were just little kids at a dance class. I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”
The following month, Swift was forced to cancel her three scheduled concerts in Vienna due to a terrorist threat. Two individuals were arrested at the time on suspicion of planning attacks inspired by the Islamic State group.
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The End of an Era shows the Grammy winner talking to her longtime friend and collaborator Ed Sheeran backstage at Wembley Stadium in London in August 2024 after the plot.
“I was on the plane headed [to Vienna when we found out],” she told Sheeran. “I just need to do this show, remember the joy of it. … I get two months off after this, which I need. I need more than anything.”
Cameras later captured Swift bursting into tears again just before she returned to the stage in London.
“From a mental standpoint, I just do live in a reality that is very unreal a lot of the time, but it’s my job to kind of be able to handle all of these feelings and then perk up immediately to perform. That’s just the way it’s got to be,” she explained.
Later that month, after wrapping the European leg of her tour, Swift addressed the cancellation of the Austrian concerts in a social media post.
“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” she wrote via Instagram. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows. But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives. I was heartened by the love and unity I saw in the fans who banded together.”
Swift then explained how she had moved forward with the tour after the foiled terror plot.
“I decided that all of my energy had to go toward helping to protect the nearly half a million people I had coming to see the shows in London,” she noted. “My team and I worked hand in hand with stadium staff and British authorities every day in pursuit of that goal, and I want to thank them for everything they did for us.”
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As for why she did not immediately make a public statement about the Vienna situation, Swift emphasized her focus on safety.
“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she added. “In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.”
The first two episodes of The End of an Era are now streaming on Disney+.
