Taylor Swift has been front and centre this week, with the 36-year-old releasing her highly-anticipated documentary series, The End of an Era.
The six-part release will show the preparation and backstage events behind Swift’s record-breaking worldwide Eras tour.
And with the first two episodes landing on Disney+ on Friday, everything from Swift’s dance training to her sweet pre-show phone call with fiancé Travis Kelce have been making headlines.
It is Swift’s emotional speech to her Eras crew that has gone particularly viral, with the documentary series opening to footage from the final Eras show.
And before they take to the stage, Swift can be seen delivering a powerful and inspiring pep talk to her ensemble.
“I want to say, we have done something that no one has ever done,” Swift can be seen telling her Eras crew before their final performance. “We have performed for over 10 million people in person – that’s not like, ‘oh, 10 million people watched a TV show,’ which is pretty amazing too. We performed for 10 million plus people.
“And I think about every single one of you as little kids,” she continued. “I think about the moment that you decided that dancing was your calling, and the moment that you first saw a band and thought, ‘man I want to save up for an instrument.’
“Every single one of us has picked professions that categorically people for the majority of the time, they tell you you shouldn’t do it. They tell you you should not try to do this. You have to love the thing so much that you override 85 to 95 percent of the advice you are given along the way by oftentimes people you respect, people you trust, people in the field. Everyone in dance, everyone in music, will tell everyone younger: ‘If there’s anything else you can do, do that!’
“And so I’ll see you getting rejected, not getting the job, not getting the part, not getting the solo,” her speech continued. “I’ll see all of those things that happened all along the way, the doors that were shut, the doors that were open, the windows you pried open. And then sometimes, I’ll see you when you’re older, and I’ll think about what you’re going to tell your family or the people that you’ll mentor – because every single person in here has the spirit to mentor others. And to tell them ‘yes, do it, try it, go for it, if you have that same love for it.’ And I think about whether that’s to your grandchildren, or to the little neighbor kid that just wants to talk to you about what that was like.
“Everyone likes to talk about phenomenons like The Eras Tour almost like it was pieces falling into place in some sort of accidental confluence of events that just happened, right?,” she added. “When I’m thinking about the people that are in this circle, I don’t think about it as pieces that fell into place, I think of each of you as like tectonic plates on the earth that took millions of micro decisions and forces of you pushing and pushing inch by inch closer together, and the Eras Tour wasn’t when all the pieces fell into place, that was when every single one of us had done so much work to where this tour was when we all clicked together.
“It is our job to make this look accidental and it is our job to make this look effortless, but I just want every single one of you to know that I in no way, shape, or form, look at this as the pieces falling into place,” Swift’s speech concluded. “You put the pieces where they are. This was the biggest challenge everyone of us has ever done, tonight, we complete that challenge.”
Like we needed another reason to love Taylor Swift!
The End of an Era documentary series is available to watch now on Disney+, with new episodes released each week.