Olivia Rodrigo On ‘Guts’ World Tour Concert Film, Growth After ‘Sour,’ New Music & More: “I Gained So Much Confidence”
Olivia Rodrigo spent the majority of the year touring for her sophomore album, GUTS, putting on over 100 performances in 22 countries, grossing more than $186M.
And now, whether they made it to a stop on her tour or not, fans get the chance to see the show from the best seat in the house for her via her Netflix concert film, Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS World Tour, which launched on the streamer Tuesday.
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Filmed during her two nights at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, California, the film gets up close and personal with Rodrigo on stage as she performs all the angsty hits from her sophomore album, like “all-american b*tch” and “get him back!” as well as some of the most impassioned anthems from her debut album Sour, including, of course, “drivers license” and “deja vu.”
“I met a lot of people just walking around various cities who said, ‘Oh, I really wanted to get tickets, but it didn’t work out.’ So I feel like this show is going to be so much fun for them,” Rodrigo told Deadline ahead of the film’s premiere. “I’m really proud of it.”
In the interview below, Rodrigo spoke with Deadline about creating the GUTS World Tour, reuniting with Chappell Roan, writing music on the road, and more.
DEADLINE: What was it like for you to get to watch your show from an outside perspective for the first time?
OLIVIA RODRIGO: It was so weird, because I know this show so well. I’ve literally lived with it for a year. It’s been all I’ve thought about for so long. But, I’ve never gotten to be an audience member and get to witness it from from a seat. It was so much fun to get to watch it, and it kind of gave me a new appreciation for everything. I really loved watching my band and my dancers and everyone too, and just the way that we all compliment each other, it was really fun.
DEADLINE: It seems like by these last LA tour dates, you’ve really settled into the show. How do you feel like you grew throughout the process to become more comfortable over time?
RODRIGO: I grew so much, I think, as a performer. I gained so much confidence. The first few shows that we did, I was so nervous, like, really petrified. I didn’t feel totally myself on stage. And by the end, I felt like I could really be me and be really easy and just be myself on there. So I’ve grown so much as a performer, but also just as a person. This was my first big arena tour. I was away from home for like, nine months, and I really had to learn how to take care of myself. So those are lessons that I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. I’m grateful to have been taught them.
DEADLINE: It was a much bigger tour than Sour. When you think back to those shows, is there anything you took from them that was valuable for this tour?
RODRIGO: I think these tours were so wildly different, just in venue size and also, I felt like a really different individual this go around. I feel like the last tour really taught me the importance of self care and taking care of your body and having proper nutrition and exercising and making sure you’re drinking enough water — all the things that your mom nags you about, it makes a world of difference. You’re so much happier. You do so much better shows when you’re feeling really healthy and strong. I think I took that info from my last tour and applied it to this tour, and it made it a lot better.
DEADLINE: As you mentioned, the venue sizes were much bigger. I love hearing the fans scream the lyrics to your songs, and I’m glad that comes through in the film. What is that experience like for you?
RODRIGO: It’s so weird. It never gets old, and I never get used to it, especially in certain countries. It’s really wild to me. Like, I remember being in Japan and hearing all of these people in Tokyo screaming back these lyrics to me, and I’m like, ‘Wow. Like, it’s so crazy how universal music can be.’ That all these people in a place that’s so far from home will know all these lyrics that I wrote my bedroom, it’s quite a wild phenomenon.
DEADLINE: It was fun to see Chappell in the film. The crowd goes crazy. What was it like for you to have her back to perform, after seeing her own meteoric rise this summer, considering she opened for you at the beginning of the tour?
RODRIGO: I’m so happy that she was in the movie, because Chappell was such a big part of the “Guts” World Tour. She opened for the first leg. She’s just so wonderful, and she helped me a lot through the touring process, just as a friend. She’s so just inspiring to me creatively. So, it was so much fun to get to include her in this, and I had so much for fun performing “Hot To Go” with her that night. It was one of the highlights of my career. It was like the craziest energy I’ve ever felt in an arena. Everyone was just so electric and so excited to see her, and it’s one of my favorite songs. It’s great. I’m really happy that it’s memorialized in film so I can go back and watch it over.
DEADLINE: I remember you speaking a bit about the pressure you felt releasing a sophomore album after the success of Sour. If you could go back and tell the version of yourself writing Guts one thing to reassure her, what would you say?
RODRIGO: Oh, my gosh, that’s emotional. I would just tell her to keep her head down and keep writing. And if you love a song, that’s really all that matters. You can’t please everyone, and not everyone’s gonna like everything you do. So that should never be the goal. I’d tell her just enjoy it and enjoy the process, and it’s all gonna be worth it.
DEADLINE: What part of the show are you most proud of?
RODRIGO: I really like the parts where I’m sitting at the piano and playing. It feels really intimate and vulnerable. And it’s just sometimes crazy to me, like there can be this huge arena full of people, but it’s still just me sitting on a piano. It’s just the way that I wrote the songs. So I think it’s grounded in a way that I find really beautiful.
DEADLINE: I really love the visuals on the tour. One of my favorite moments is when you’re sitting on the moon and floating around the arena. Tell me about developing those visuals and what some of your inspirations were.
RODRIGO: It’s so much fun to create your own show, because it can be like, ‘I visualize me flying around the room in a moon,’ and then suddenly there’s this giant silver moon on cables for you to do it. It’s so wild. It’s like a creative person’s dream. But I really wanted it to feel interactive. I just wanted everyone in every seat to feel like they were part of the show and that they were involved. So I really liked the moon aspect in that sense, because it just kind of feels like it includes everyone, and I get to see everyone kind of up close and personal. Another aspect that I really loved is the plexiglass. We replaced one of the boards on stage with a piece of plexiglass, and so we shot under it. It’s like an upscale shot. I was really excited to do that, and really happy that it turned out the way that it turned out.
DEADLINE: That was also such a cool shot. I loved that.
RODRIGO: That was my idea. I really thought that would be so cool to do, like, weird, f*cked up camera angles. There’s a camera angle from the ceiling like from above. But I was like, ‘What if we do it from below? That could be so sick.’ And the fact that we executed it was really awesome. It’s one of my favorite parts of the show. I really use it in ‘Obsessed’ a lot. I’m very, like, sexy on the plexiglass. That was one of my favorite parts to do every night.
DEADLINE: It was funny to hear you talk about ideas for music striking at inconvenient times. Did that happen to you on tour?
RODRIGO: I had a lot of ideas on stage, actually, which is kind of weird. That happened quite a few times. I got a lot of ideas on the bus, and then I would record voice memos of them, and I’d listen to them back, and I, like, can’t hear a thing, because everything is just so loud. Writing on the road isn’t always particularly easy, but yeah, inspiration just strikes at random times. The more you listen to it, the more it comes. So I try to never turn it away. I feel something. I try to kind of express it. And then I find that they visit you more often that way.
DEADLINE: How did you handle it when you had an idea on stage?
RODRIGO: I would just hope and pray that I remembered it when I got off stage, and then I get off stage and I take a shower and I’d record it. But it didn’t always work out that way. Sometimes I forgot.
DEADLINE: There was a lot of growth in between Sour and Guts. Do you see a similar evolution from Guts to anything new you’ve been writing?
RODRIGO: Totally. I think as I just grow as a person, and I learn more about music, and I have different perspectives, it’s impossible for that not to be reflected in your songwriting. Hopefully by the time I put out my next album, it’ll feel more mature and like a different take on things. I think that’s what’s so fun about writing songs, is you get to keep pushing yourself and learning and growing and expanding.
DEADLINE: What are some of the biggest things you’ve learned about navigating fame over the last few years, as your success has grown?
RODRIGO: It’s just an exercise, I think, in putting your horse blinders on sometimes, especially when you’re trying to be creative. Having other people’s opinions and what the public thinks in your head is just kind of like the antithesis of inspiration and being creative. So I think it’s just learning how to block voices out that don’t matter and trying to listen to your own voice and listen to the people you trust, listen to their opinion. But it’s not always easy, and I think it just takes practice.
DEADLINE: What are your big plans now that the tour is over, and you’ve presumably got some time off?
RODRIGO: I’m really excited to do some cooking. I’m not a huge cook, but I was on the road for nine months and didn’t have a kitchen at all, and so for some reason, I’m really interested in making a meal. I’m gonna go on vacation and just gonna see all my friends and catch up and hang out. Be 21.
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