Good News for the Dallas Cowboys: Cheerleaders Return in America's Sweethearts

Perhaps you’ve heard: the current Dallas Cowboys' season is a bit of a dumpster fire — which, honestly, feels like kind of an insult to both dumpsters and fires.

That’s not to say that every single thing about the team is horrible news. Netflix announced yesterday that it will bring back America’s Sweethearts: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders for a second season.

The seven-episode docuseries, directed by Greg Whiteley, premiered earlier this year and, according to reports, racked up 2.3 million views in its first four days of release.

What’s more, America’s Sweethearts was in Netflix’s top 10 TV shows for five weeks and reached the top 10 in 27 countries, according to the streamer. (The show even sparked a brief viral TikTok trend of users attempting to recreate the Cowboys cheerleaders’ famous “Thunderstruck” routine.)

In a fascinating interview with Variety around the first season's release, Whiteley outlined how the series was captured over the course of the 2023–24 NFL season — the second season, ostensibly filming now, will cover 2024–25 — working with multiple crews during games to get footage of what he describes as the “beautiful and edgy and cool” cheerleading routines.

“The problem is, they spend so much time concealing how hard it is,” Whiteley told Variety. “They take something that is extremely difficult and make it look graceful and effortless, so you dismiss it. I witnessed people searching for their seats and buying concessions while they’re performing ‘Thunderstruck.’

“I remember thinking, ‘If you knew how hard it was to do what these girls are doing! They’re running several hundred yards, in boots, in two-and-a-half minutes, with a smile, and they’re somehow not sweating!’ People think they just wake up and roll out of bed and do it. ... You could give me a million years. I could never perform a jump split.”

In that same interview, Whiteley alluded to continuing the story: “Our last two or three weeks of filming, we were just starting to hit our stride,” he told Variety. “They have plenty at stake and that breeds a certain culture that’s very buttoned down and can sometimes bump up against a documentary film crew trying to pierce that.”

He'll get his chance, and viewers will have an opportunity to see the results for themselves, presumably next year when the second season debuts on Netflix (a release date was not immediately available).

After the release of Season 1 of America's Sweethearts, fans called for a boycott of Cowboys Cheerleaders director Kelli Finglass, arguing that the cheerleaders are overworked and underpaid, so there's no telling what bad PR this next season will bring.

In the meantime, Dallas Cowboys fans who are somehow still able to feel some excitement about the team and its sun-filled stadium can fill their idle hours and tune into Netflix on Friday for the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing extravaganza.