Erin Lee Carr Turns Her Lens on 'The Swan' After Britney and the 'Cannibal Cop'

Erin Lee Carr's new documentary, "The Swan: Behind the Mirror," premieres Sept. 29 on Hulu, revisiting Nely Galán's notorious 2004 Fox reality-competition series "The Swan," in which 16 women underwent extreme plastic surgery, dentistry, dieting and therapy before competing in a beauty pageant — complete with a lingerie portion — for the title of The Swan. The show is widely considered one of the worst reality programs ever produced.

The feature-length documentary draws on testimonials from a dozen former contestants, many of whom describe lasting trauma, as well as series producers and one of the show's plastic surgeons, who emerges from the film particularly badly.

"On a personal level, I didn't like my body and what I looked like and always wanted to look like somebody else," Carr told Variety. "But in many ways, 'The Swan' was a harbinger of what was to come."

Carr, 38, is the daughter of the late New York Times columnist David Carr and one of the most prolific documentarians working today. In the past five years she has directed "Britney vs Spears" for Netflix, "The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring," "Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara," the docuseries "I Am Not a Monster: The Lois Riess Murders" and the scripted series "Murdaugh: Death in a Family." She also produced "Stormy," about Stormy Daniels, along with "Trophy Wife: Murder on Safari" and "Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini."

She made "The Swan: Behind the Mirror" in under a year, faster than her usual 18-month process, after Hulu approached her about a project developed with the U.K. production company Expectation TV. Carr refused to select only three subjects, the standard practice in feature documentaries. "I wasn't going to do the same thing that happened to these women where they got chosen whose story was best," she said. She interviewed every participating contestant for two to three hours and shaped the film in the edit.

Securing key figures proved difficult. Dr. Terry Dubrow, now a cast member on "The Real Housewives of Orange County," asked for a fee Carr called implausible for a documentary interview — under $100,000 — and did not participate. Galán, the show's creator, wanted to executive produce any "Swan" documentary, which Carr rejected. The production also failed to license the original footage and instead relied on fair use, which is why interviewees comment on episodes via iPads in the film.

Dubrow has publicly dismissed the women's accounts as "all a bunch of BS." Carr wrote back to him: "I'm excited to hear what you think." She noted that contestants she spoke with had actually liked Dubrow, making his public dismissal of their experiences "puzzling" before seeing the film.

The documentary also examines a nude photo shoot that Dr. Haworth conducted with Season 2 contestants. Carr said the photos were reportedly intended for an "art book," but no agreement existed about deleting them, and no production staff attended the shoot. "In a story about exploitation it's important to include those details," she said.

Carr traces her focus on women's stories to a disturbing chapter early in her career. After making her 2015 film "Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop," her subject, Gilberto Valle, would not stop messaging her. "I felt harassed and stalked, and I said, I'm never making a film about a man again," she recalled. An FBI officer in Manhattan later told her Valle "was absolutely going to kill people," and she moved as a result.

Legal pressure has become a constant in her work. On "Stormy," co-made with Sarah Gibson and Judd Apatow, the Southern District of New York sought to block the film's release; security swept for bombs before its South by Southwest premiere. During the making of "Britney vs Spears," she received legal letters and pressure from someone at an agency urging her not to proceed.

The Spears experience, she said, was "a very punishing experience in my life" — two years devoted to ending the singer's conservatorship, ending with Spears disavowing the film as exploitative. Carr emphasized the team withheld the widely circulated paparazzi images of Spears's public breakdown. "What other people think of my work can't be a part of my opinion because then it will ruin how I make films," she said. Still, she counts the outcome as a victory: "She's not being financially taken advantage of by her father anymore."

Carr now builds her projects around "enthusiastic participation," she said — subjects who want their stories told. She fit "The Swan" between an upcoming Netflix feature and new scripted projects, and the approach, she said, has been "extremely healing."