'Sheryl': Why Sheryl Crow's new Showtime documentary was 'emotional and exhausting'

AUSTIN, Texas – Sheryl Crow needed to be sold on a documentary about her life.

The pitch came from her longtime manager and close friend Scooter Weintraub. He'd gotten the idea after devouring numerous docs during the pandemic. "I woke up one morning after watching about 100 documentaries during lockdown; I was like, 'It's time for Sheryl,'" Weintraub told an audience Friday, the opening night of Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival where "Sheryl" debuted. (It premieres on Showtime May 6 at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT.)

Weintraub (a producer), Crow, director Amy Scott and producer Brian Morrow participated in a Q&A following Friday's screening.

Weintraub "talked to me, and I said, 'absolutely not!'" Crow recalled, getting laughs from the audience. "I was like, 'You make documentaries when people are dead, after they've died in a fiery plane crash." Crow "came around" and with a specific vision for the project.

"I wanted it to be really honest," Crow told the crowd. "I didn't want it to be a feel good – 'she's won all these awards, and she's done this and done that.' There's a whole life there that existed before I ever made it. My first album came out was 30."

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Crow, now 60, applauds Scott and her team for "creating a really safe place for me to expose the hard stuff."

"Sheryl" doesn't shy away from the tough topics. It begins with Crow's interest in music, which developed at a young age, and the early days of her career when she was dropping off demo tapes to record labels. It also covers three broken engagements – one to disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong – and her 2006 breast cancer diagnosis.

Crow candidly describes the depths of her depression and the horror of sexual harassment allegedly dealt by Michael Jackson's former manager Frank DiLeo, who died in 2011. (She also spoke about the misconduct to The Independent last year.)

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"I talked about (the sexual harassment) on my first album, and I was heavily shut down," Crow told USA TODAY on the red carpet. Her debut album, "Tuesday Night Music Club" (1993), featured a track titled "What I Can Do for You" written from the viewpoint of a harasser. "I experienced what it was like before the #MeToo movement to suffer that and not have anyone be on your side and be believed, and also be vilified, to a certain extent.

"This documentary talks about things that have happened to a lot of us, and I hope that it creates a safe place for other women to talk about those things, or to know that they're not alone," she added. "For me, digging back through these memories was really emotional. In some ways, might've been healing, but not at all less emotional than when I was experiencing them, because I've never talked about them before. I've never actually delved in and told my side of the story. It was emotional and exhausting."

Scott also sees the universal appeal of "Sheryl."

"There's universal themes of triumph and tragedy and song and sacrifice," Scott said on the carpet. "In my heart of hearts, it's for little girls because I have little girls, and I want little girls to look at Sheryl the way that I look at Sheryl and say, I can do the same thing, and I can climb those mountains.'"

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sheryl Crow: Filming Showtime doc was 'emotional and exhausting'