When Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts Tour opened in Palm Springs last February, diversity wrote: “It’s a rock ‘n’ roll show, by the way – perhaps the best rock tour we get all year, even if the season is still young.” Now that a concert film commemorating the recently completed tour is released and the chance for a reassessment approaches, there is no reason to withdraw any of it. “Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour,” premiering today on Netflix, further underscores how assured the show was as a captivating explosion of guitar-driven energy from a 21-year-old star who has clearly earned her license to be a rocker.

On the eve of the film’s release, Rodrigo called to talk to her about her feelings about seeing herself on screen, her ongoing performance insecurities, how she keeps the rock front and center (despite some signature ballads), and such She brings many women onto the stage as musicians and dancers. One of these women was Chappell Roan, first as the tour’s opening act and then as a duet partner for “Hot to Go,” filmed at the Intuit Dome in LA at the end of the tour. Rodrigo makes it sound like she’ll have a long wait before she returns to reveal the title of another four-letter album. But fans have this mostly “guts”/all-glory tour souvenir to remember.

Given its reach, it seems like a no-brainer to choose Netflix for this. But artists have other options, including theater engagements for concert films – like Laufeny, who you recently premiered and is bringing her concert film to theaters on a December weekend. Did you think about how to make this accessible to people, or was that clear from the start?

I always wanted it to be Netflix. I was really excited about the idea that people who maybe hadn’t gotten a ticket and wanted to come to the show could finally see it. And Netflix is ​​the most accessible to everyone, so that’s always been the dream.

While watching the entire film, did you discover anything about yourself and your performance style that you may not have been aware of before?

It was an interesting experience to sit down and watch the film from start to finish because I’ve been living and breathing this show for a year of my life and never really had the chance to sit down and watch it. It was cool to see it from a different perspective. I mean, I try not to be so self-critical. There are certain moments where I can say, “Oh, you’re a little more nervous than other moments” – and other moments where I’m like, “Oh yeah, you’re really in the middle of it and getting lost in it.” Whenever I get pretty nervous when I play the piano, and sometimes you can see it on my face. I’m always just afraid that I’ll hit the wrong note. But other than that, it was pretty fun to watch.

We saw you play a few pieces on the piano, including at the Grammy Museum last year, and we felt that you were confident and capable enough to play a full show on the piano.

One day I will do it. But the most obvious thing is when you make a mistake. I feel like everything else I can mess up and somehow get away with, but on the piano I’m like, “Ah, I have to practice.” But I definitely have a lot of hours on this tour.

Because of the big screens in venues on tour, you already have good reason to think about how you perform on screen. And there’s a lot of acting, if we can call it that, throughout the course of the show, in your performance style that embodies the song. You’re a master of eye-rolling, so to speak. Do you like to think about how you dramatize the songs, particularly through your face, knowing that it’s going to be on the big screens in the show, but then also knowing that it’s really going to be captured in this film?

It’s so funny that you say that because everyone always makes fun of me because I like acting in front of the camera. I grew up watching TV shows; I was an actress. And so I think in a strange way it just became ingrained in me and practiced: acting in front of the camera – wide eyes in front of the camera. It’s just a given. And it’s kind of funny: When we’re trying to record vocals and he wants a really emotional performance, sometimes my producer Dan (Nigro) grabs his iPhone and records me, and miraculously it’s always a better vocal. (Laughs.) So it was a lot of fun to do that for this Netflix movie.

Now that you’ve seen the film, do you have a favorite number, and is it perhaps different from what it was when you did these shows?

Oh. That’s a great question. My favorite number is usually “All American Bitch.” I like making the crowd scream and vent all their anger; it always feels really cathartic. But I really liked “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” in the movie. There are dancers in it and I think it’s visually really beautiful and it’s one of my favorite songs on the record. So that was fun to watch.

That brings us to the choreography. The dancers don’t appear until 28 minutes in and are used sparingly, but the choreography is well done and really adds dynamism to the whole thing. It was brought up that you had a question about whether or not to use dancers. It’s like a rock ‘n’ roll show, and do dancers fit in traditionally? On the other hand, your core audience may have never seen a show without choreography, so of course having it is a given. It feels like they’ve thought about how to choreograph songs like “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” or “Love Is Embarrassing” so that songs about feeling insecure don’t have this incongruously perfect, acrobatic dance.

Thanks for saying that. I mean, there was a little debate at the beginning (about whether to have dancers) because yeah, I wanted this show to feel like a rock show and I wanted it to be hot, sweaty, loud and that’s what it is Things I love. But the dancers add such a beautiful element and I think it makes the show much more interesting and engaging for viewers. And I really wanted the choreography to feel really unique. Admittedly, I’m not the best dancer in the world, and if I got on stage and tried to do classic pop choreography, I’d look really bad doing it. So I really wanted it to seem kind of weird and individual. And I love all of my dancers so much and I think they are so unique and individually talented. Sometimes I feel like you can just watch one of them the entire show because they’re just so entertaining in their own right, so I really love that aspect. I’ve really grown to love them all and it’s nice to share the stage with such girls.

It was the opposite of a boys’ club up there, with an all-female band and the dancers bringing a lot more women on stage, including possibly trans or non-binary people…

Yes, there is a trans non-binary person who is my dancer. Thank you for noticing this.

Why was it important to you to have all that female energy up there and not have a bunch of guys running around on stage with you?

(Laughs) You know, I love rock music so much and that’s all I listened to as a kid. Well, I appreciate rock music and, you know, I also love singer-songwriter pop music, but rock music had a special place in my heart. And I remember being maybe 16 and discovering all these girl bands like Hole and Sleater-Kinney and L7 and these bands that were playing music that I had only heard men sing and play before. I remember how powerful that felt and how I just fell in love with all these girls and these bands. I think it’s really powerful watching a bunch of girls play rock music, power chords and stuff like that. So that’s really the environment that I wanted to recreate for myself.

When we reviewed the opening night and wrote that it was “perhaps the best rock tour we’ll see all year,” which was tweeted, it was hilarious to see how many old school rock people got pissed, because we said so.

Well, thank you very much for that. That’s a big compliment. Thanks for falling for this sword for me!

They had a great selection of different opening acts on this tour, including the Breeders. But it was fun to see Chappell Roan supporting on opening night, and of course the film documents her coming back to join you on the main set for one of the last shows in LA. So it was fun to learn and do “Hot to Go” with her?

Well, I certainly didn’t have to learn “Hot to Go.” I think this was actually one of my top five Spotify songs like two years ago, so I know this song like the back of my hand. I love it so much and it was so much fun performing with her. I’ve heard some pretty loud screams in my life. I’ve been lucky enough to see a lot of girls lose their minds over the years, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard a scream as loud as the scream I heard when I said Chappell was coming on stage . People were so excited – I swear to God, they were just screaming bloody murder for six minutes. It was great. But yeah, I’m really glad she’s in this movie. She was there for most of my trip, and I was there for her in a way since we’ve known each other for a long time. (The two artists share Nigro as co-writer/producer.) She was also the opening act for my “Sour” tour and does background vocals on both of my albums. So we’re very connected to each other’s worlds, and I think it was only fitting that she was included in this film since she was such a big part of this tour.

Do you have any idea how long it will take you to start Act 3 and work on a Guts sequel?

Oh my God. I’m pretty tired after this tour. I’m really looking forward to just taking a break and gathering inspiration because I enjoy it and I can’t put a bit of pressure on myself. I mean, I cook things all the time…but I try to keep the pressure down.