Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” docuseries captures the tearful superstar saying she felt “hunted” in the summer of 2024 after a thwarted terrorist attack led to the cancelation of her Vienna concerts and a knife attack at a Swift-themed dance class in Liverpool, England left three young fans dead.
“The End of an Era” depicts the Grammy winner’s initial conceit and prep for the record-breaking, nearly two-year tour and how it quickly became, as 35-year-old Swift said, “more than a tour.”
“It’s like a force to be reckoned with in global culture. So never in my life did I think we would have a terrorist plot,” an emotional Swift says. “Being afraid like something’s gonna happen to your fans at any moment, this is a new challenge.”
AP Photo/Heinz-Peter Bader
Police officers stand near Taylor Swift fans in Vienna on Aug. 9, 2024. Organizers of three Swift concerts in Vienna were cancelled after officials announced arrests over an apparent terrorist plot. (AP Photo/Heinz-Peter Bader)
Four teens — most of whom are believed to have been radicalized online — were arrested in connection with having planned to attack Swift’s Vienna shows at Ernst Happel Stadium, all of which were canceled “for everyone’s safety.”
“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, like I’m skating on thin ice or something,” Swift says from her London hotel room. “We’ve had a series of very violent, scary things happen to the tour, like, we dodged like a massacre situation. And so I’ve just been kind of all over the place.”
Swift, who felt “kind of all over the place,” started crying while discussing the “horrible” knife attack Welsh-born Axel Rudakubana, 18, committed days earlier on July 29, 2024 near Liverpool, killing three — Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9; Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7; and 6-year-old Bebe King — and wounding 10 others.
Swift assured viewers she’d “be smiling” when meeting survivors before her London shows: “Any of this gets out of the way before you ever go on stage,” she said, seemingly referring to her visibly emotional state. “You lock it off. … Three and a half hours, they don’t have to worry about you.”
Swift later tells Ed Sheeran she was en route to Vienna when she learned of the would-be attack, and intended to spend her mid-tour hiatus “somewhere no one can find me. I just don’t want to be tracked like an animal.”
