For decades, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have occupied a unique place in American sports culture. Even for people who have never watched a full NFL game, the white boots, blue uniforms, and perfectly synchronized kick lines remain instantly recognizable. They are arguably the most famous cheerleading squad in all of sports, carrying a level of visibility and mythology that extends far beyond football itself. At the same time, that fame has also made the organization a lightning rod for evolving conversations around beauty standards, gender roles, and whether professional cheerleading still fits comfortably within modern sports culture.
That tension is part of what makes Netflix’s “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” such a compelling watch. Created by Emmy-winning filmmaker Greg Whiteley, the series could have easily slipped into glossy promotional material or leaned too heavily into caricature. Instead, Whiteley approaches the organization with the same observational patience and emotional curiosity that made “Cheer” and “Last Chance U” breakout successes. The result is a series that acknowledges the contradictions surrounding the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders while still finding humanity within the women fighting for those coveted roster spots.
Premiering in 2024, “America’s Sweethearts” follows the squad from auditions and training camp through the NFL season, documenting the brutal process of earning and keeping one of the most coveted spots in professional cheerleading. What surprised many viewers was how physically demanding the job actually is. Beneath the polished image and iconic uniforms is a world built on relentless repetition, injuries, exhaustion, and constant pressure to perform. Whiteley’s cameras spend as much time in quiet moments of doubt and frustration as they do under the bright lights of AT&T Stadium.
“I think most people were surprised to learn how gritty, how difficult, how physically arduous it is to be a cheerleader,” Whiteley told Awards Focus. “If you pulled most people that don’t know much about it, they would probably assume your only qualification is that you’re beautiful. There’s more to it than that.”
In many ways, the show taps into the same emotional pull that made early competition television so addictive. Every episode carries real stakes. There are rookies chasing a lifelong dream, veterans quietly wondering if their time is running out, and painful cuts that can feel career ending for the women involved. While the idea of sisterhood genuinely becomes the emotional backbone of the series, Whiteley also allows moments of tension and disappointment to remain in frame instead of sanding them down. That honesty is what gives the show weight. “America’s Sweethearts” is entertaining in the way great sports documentaries often are, but it also becomes a surprisingly intimate look at women operating inside a system that asks for perfection almost every day.
Part of the reason the series works is because Whiteley never treats the cheerleaders as stereotypes. Over the course of the show, the women emerge as elite performers whose lives revolve around discipline, sacrifice, and an almost relentless pursuit of improvement. What initially could have been viewed through the lens of spectacle slowly transforms into something much more human. The pressure to make the team, maintain appearances, manage injuries, and balance personal relationships all become part of the larger emotional fabric of the series.
The show has quickly become one of Netflix’s most talked-about sports docuseries, with the streamer already confirming that “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” will return for a third season in 2026. The upcoming season is expected to once again follow a new class of hopeful rookies and returning veterans as they attempt to survive one of the most competitive audition processes in professional sports.
Greg Whiteley recently spoke with Awards Focus about the unexpected emotional core of the series, the creative freedom granted by the Cowboys organization, why audiences continue connecting with stories about passionate people, and how “America’s Sweethearts” balances entertainment with authenticity.
Awards Focus: Nice to talk to you. I’m curious to know what led you to this particular project and have you always had an interest in cheer?
Greg Whiteley: I just got a phone call from the Cowboys. It was probably five years ago now, maybe four. My sense is they had seen the series “Cheer,” but I don’t know that definitively. I don’t know what sparked it, but they reached out. I was initially skeptical because working with a very large brand like the Dallas Cowboys, I was nervous we wouldn’t be able to get the access, the creative freedom, and the editorial control that, as documentarians, we need to do our work. So I initially passed.
But when they explained to my agent, “No, no, we would agree to those terms. We would just need to meet him first,” then I agreed to a meeting. After I met with them, I was extremely impressed with Charlotte Jones, who I met with over dinner. Then I was given a tour of the locker room where I happened to meet Kelly, the coach. In the aggregate of all those conversations, I just felt like they were going to give us what we needed, the support and freedom to do an authentic, honest take on this world that has such a large commercial brand.
I also thought it would be cool. I left there thinking this is an interesting world, and if we’re allowed to explore it, I think there’d be a great show in it. I thought other people would be interested in it too, and I think that turned out to be true.
AF: What was your perception of professional cheerleading, and specifically the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, before you got involved with the show? They’ve obviously become such a nationally recognizable part of “America’s Team,” but as conversations around the objectification of women and gender roles in sports entertainment have evolved over the years, I’m curious what your own perspective on the organization was before you got that call.
Whiteley: Probably the same as yours right now, Ben. I didn’t know anything. I knew of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, but that was about it.
As I’ve gotten to know this world, I’ve realized that being a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader has almost nothing to do with the world of collegiate competitive cheer that I spent two years documenting, except for the level of passionate commitment that both camps of people seem to have for their respective sport or activity.
AF: There are obviously a lot of stereotypes around cheerleading and cheerleaders themselves. In that first season of shooting, and now obviously well into Season 3, what were some of the stereotypes you quickly dismissed yourself and now want viewers to see through as well?
Whiteley: I think most people were surprised to learn how gritty, difficult, and physically arduous it is to be a cheerleader. The level of talent that’s required, I think if you polled most people who don’t know much about it, they would probably assume your only qualification is that you’re beautiful. There’s more to it than that.
I suspected some of those things would be true. I’ve learned enough about people who are really good at something to know they usually didn’t get there because of some superficial quality, for the most part. Seeing how hard they work and seeing how complicated their lives are was really eye opening.
You raised a couple of issues, like the idea of objectifying women and the whole concept of women on the sideline supporting a male sport, which can feel antiquated or outdated. Yet there’s also something strangely progressive about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders that I found. There’s something empowering there as well.
My sense has been that each of them is strong. Almost all of them have this incredible sense of community, which I felt became the heart of the show. Naively, I would have thought that like any professional environment, there would be jealousy, envy, backstabbing, intrigue, hierarchy. But what I found with the cheerleaders is this thing they call the sisterhood, and it’s real. They’re not faking it.
There’s an authentic love they each have for one another and a real sense of team. These are cliches a lot of us roll our eyes at and say, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” But for them, it’s very real, and I found it moving.
AF: In a season where we ultimately see about seven hours of footage, how much footage is actually captured from pre-tryouts all the way through the end of the season?
Whiteley: We’re actually capturing some now. We’re at an apartment of one of the cheerleaders.
I couldn’t tell you the rough numbers, but I know we film a lot, and we only have a handful of episodes it all goes into. For me, our process has always been that I want to avoid bringing a specific agenda to a subject matter. I want to learn and discover, and I want to take audiences along that journey.
The people I work with share that ethic. In doing that, we don’t know how to do it any other way than to just live with them and hang out with them. It’s not enough to film them at the studio or at the game. We want to go home with them. More than that, we want to meet their families wherever those families might be.
Only then are you starting to get to a place where you can find things in their personal life that, in poetic ways, are manifested in their art or their sport. I think that’s when you’re really telling a good story. It just takes time. I don’t know how to do it any other way than to put in the time.
AF: When the Cowboys approached you, did they have specific objectives? What were they hoping to get out of a show centered on the cheerleaders?
Whiteley: I learned during the process of meeting with them that they are the most valuable sports franchise in the world by quite a bit. They’re more valuable than AC Milan, Manchester United, any F1 team, or the New York Yankees. It’s the Dallas Cowboys.
They are that way because Jerry Jones and his daughter Charlotte Jones are kind of geniuses at this stuff. They take on a lot of risk by letting a filmmaker like me into their world and opening themselves up to let us film what we’re going to film.
They’re very confident that the more you get to know them and their world, of course there will be some warts and complicated things, but they have a lot of faith that if our aim is to document this world authentically, audiences are going to walk away with a greater love and respect for both the cheerleaders and the Cowboys. They’ve been proven right.
Jerry Jones is kind of the P.T. Barnum of sports owners, and it’s served him well. He’s a bit of a maverick. He’s open and transparent about his feelings and emotions, and he becomes a bit of a character himself. The whole family has had to develop a thick skin because when you stick your head that high out of the ground, people are going to want to chop it off.
They’re willing to endure that, and I think one of the fruits of that has been this fan base that has grown and grown over the years to the point where they now have the most valuable brand in sports.
AF: Jerry Jones is famously known for being involved in everything surrounding the team, from player decisions on down. You’ve talked a lot in this interview about the creative freedom you’ve been given. Does he see anything before it airs, and what level of input does he want to have?
Whiteley: Our agreement with the Cowboys is they get to review cuts before they go out, and we’ve done that everywhere we’ve gone.
But they don’t have editorial control. When they see it, we want their input if there’s something factually incorrect. There’s also language in the contract protecting them if we were to do something that rises to the legal definition of defamation, which essentially means we knowingly put something false in because it serves our purposes.
The Cowboys never would have allowed us in if they thought those were our motives. We don’t think that’s good storytelling. But at the same time, we’re not going to shy away from complicated topics.
I’m sure there are things in the show they probably would prefer not to have there if they had editorial control. They probably wouldn’t choose to include some of the storylines we’ve included. But to their credit, they’ve been true to their word. They don’t block access. They’ve been totally open and transparent. They don’t dodge our questions.
Their review is simply there to flag anything that isn’t true, and that’s about it.
AF: Do you get emotionally invested? You spend far more time with these women than viewers do. Do you find yourself personally rooting for certain rookies trying out for the team?
Whiteley: Oh yeah, for sure. In fact, if I didn’t feel some level of investment and empathy with the people I’m trying to film, then I picked the wrong people. Because if I don’t care about them, how am I going to get an audience to care about them?
That’s the currency. That’s the whole secret to this kind of storytelling. You have to tell people’s stories in such a way that audiences care. I just don’t know how to do that unless I care first.
AF: So it’s fair to say the people who ultimately become focal points are often those you and the production team feel audiences will genuinely root for?
Whiteley: Yeah.
There are 36 of them, and I haven’t met a single one I don’t think is great and worthy of their story being told. But there’s a strange dance you do during the first week or so of filming where certain people rise to the surface, and I’ve learned to trust that.
You can make the mistake in this kind of filmmaking where you’re a month into shooting and suddenly somebody else emerges and becomes the shiny new toy. The danger in constantly chasing whatever feels newest is that it prevents you from going deep with a few people instead of superficially covering all 36.
I’ve learned time and again that you’re just better off going deep with a few.
AF: After spending so much time with these women, what new respect do you now have for not just Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders specifically, but people who choose cheerleading and dance as a profession?
Whiteley: I think there’s something compelling about people who care deeply about something.
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are dancers first. If you’re a dancer at this level, you fell in love with it at a very young age, and that love was so deep that you stayed with it. You sacrificed friendships, time at home, and vacations to hone your craft and get on that treadmill that even gives you a chance to become a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader.
When you find people who are that passionate about something, I almost think now, at this stage in my career, that you could be passionate about anything, and when there’s that level of commitment, audiences are going to find it interesting.
AF: The show’s obviously been a huge hit. There was a line toward the end of the season where Kelly said it’s harder to become a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader than get into an Ivy League school. How much have applications increased since the show began airing?
Whiteley: It was interesting. Season 1 came out, and we were curious how it would affect tryouts for the second season. But submissions for tryouts had already closed before the show even aired.
We did notice during this third season a significant uptick.
AF: One thing I didn’t realize before watching the show was how many women come from all over the country. I always assumed the team mostly drew from local Texas talent, which obviously would already be substantial on its own. That broader national reach was really interesting to see and probably ties back into the community building you talked about earlier.
Congratulations on the show.
Whiteley: Thank you, Ben. Pleasure talking with you.