Sheryl Crow Tells “The Whole Story” In SXSW Documentary ‘Sheryl’

It’s a brave rock star who will risk letting someone else tell their story on film. But that’s what Sheryl Crow has done in Sheryl, a documentary by Amy Scott that is making its world premiere at SXSW.

“When my manager [Scooter Weintraub], who’s been with me for 32 years, came to me and said, ‘Do you have an interest in having a documentary made about you?’ I was really reticent to do that,” Crow admitted as she stopped by Deadline’s SXSW Studio in Austin, with Scott next to her. “After kind of reconsidering the fact that I’ve been in the business as a woman for as long as I have that there’s a lot of story that people don’t know, I chose Amy because I loved her sensibility with the work that I’d seen that she’d done, and I felt like the story that she would tell… would be tastefully done and she would get what was important about my life.”

For Scott, director of an acclaimed 2018 documentary about director Hal Ashby, part of the mission was to create an environment on set that felt comfortable for her subject.

“We kind of created a family, I felt like, around you, with your team,” Scott said to Crow. “It just became a good foundation for truth and honesty.”

Crow, winner of 9 Grammy Awards, doesn’t hold back in the film — speaking openly about facing sexual harassment during her career, getting a big break early on with Michael Jackson, her relationship with cyclist Lance Armstrong, surviving breast cancer, and suffering depression at times.

“Really, truth be told, the hard stuff in life is what brought about the art. And I think every artist will attest to that fact,” Crow observed. “There is a whole other life in my music that doesn’t get heard in radio. So for people who don’t know who I am, but only know me by “All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun’ and ‘Every Day Is a Winding Road,’ that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I felt like if we’re going to tell the story, we need to tell the whole story. And I felt like I had a real safe place to do that with a woman who could understand what it means to fight tooth and nail to find your position in the business of the arts. And it’s no joke. It’s not like being a man in the business, and we’ve come far, but not far enough.”

Sheryl is set to premiere on Showtime on Friday, May 6. Watch the full conversation above, including Crow’s thoughts on her parents appearing in the film, and what The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards had to say about her.