Lainey Wilson Takes the Reins

Lainey Wilson didn’t become a country music superstar by accident. While the 33-year-old musician was born to be a legendary voice in country music, she wasn’t born into the country music industrial complex — she had to work for it, and work hard. 

As she points out in her documentary Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool, premiering April 22 on Netflix, “I’ve been here 14 years. So a 14-year overnight success, if you want to call it that.” 

When Wilson and her team set about the task of selecting a director to document this whirlwind chapter in her life, she wanted someone who understood what it took to get here. Enter award-winning documentary director Amy Scott, who has the skills to pull off a film that’s as large as Wilson’s voice and as infectious as her stage presence.

“I pulled back the layers, and Amy Scott, the director, did a great job at getting down to those layers. I was like, ‘Dang, she’s my therapist. I feel like I need to Venmo her!’” says Wilson in an exclusive red carpet interview with Luxiere from the film’s world premiere at SXSW on March 17. 

“I knew that she also had worked really hard in her business. Both our industries are male-dominated, and to see how hard she’s had to work to be where she’s at, I think she understood how hard I’ve had to work to be where I’m at, and so we had this mutual respect for each other.”

Scott also noted commonalities between their respective career and creative journeys.

“She’s from a small town in the middle of Louisiana. She did not come from a trust fund. She did not come from a major metropolitan city. She did not come from the coasts,” says Scott in an exclusive interview with Luxiere. 

“I felt like, ‘Oh, I know her.’ I’m from a similar place, you know. I’m from Lawton, Oklahoma. My parents were public school educators. You’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to work for everything you do, like double time, but anything is possible.” –Amy Scott

Can’t Sit Still

Though Wilson may have the country vocal chops in the lineage of Dolly, Reba, Martina and Miranda, she wouldn’t have risen to where she is today without her tenacious work ethic and bona fide grit, which Keepin’ Country Cool explores in detail. 

“I come from a family of wheelers and dealers. My dad always, and my mom too, they’re just wheelin’ and dealin’,” says Wilson from the stage of the Paramount Theater during her post-premiere Q&A at SXSW. 

“When you grow up on a farm, you see your parents get up every single day and bust their tail to make a living to provide [...] And so that’s just really how I have treated this career.”

It feels apt for Wilson to compare her career to her childhood on the family farm in Baskin, Louisiana (population: 158). Farming is hard work, but it is also rooted in patience. As the documentary explores, Wilson lived in a Flagstaff bumper pull camper trailer in the studio parking lot of her producer and mentor, Jerry Cupit, for years. After assembling her full-time band — it’s a rarity in this industry to not just use session musicians — she continued to grind, but at least this time she wasn’t alone.

Scott also could relate to Wilson’s creative community; she’s made five documentaries with her friends at Shark Pig Studios. As Keepin’ Country Cool was largely shot in cinéma vérité, a filmmaking philosophy that drops audiences into the moment rather than explaining it, she ran it with a very small crew. Often, it was only Scott, director of photography Jonathon Narducci on A Cam, and producers Jonathan Lynch and Brian Morrow running sound and shooting b-roll on 16mm film. This streamlined crew followed Wilson nimbly across tour stops in the Southeast, Vegas and California, and captured candid moments behind closed doors. 

“There’s a direct parallel,” comments Scott on the similarities between Wilson’s band and her crew. “We have talked about it. She’s like, ‘Look at you, you’ve got your band just like I’ve got my band.’ They are the reason that I can even pull this stuff off.”

Case in point: Scott and her team received over 50 hours of archival footage from Wilson’s parents, starting with Lainey in utero through her teenage Hannah Montana impersonator years and her pre-superstardom Nashville-era. Scott and her editor Matt Thiesen and her team at MakeMake waded through the tapes. 

“We spent months watching them, just hoping to catch a glimpse of something,” says Scott, noting that Wilson is the most documented subject of any of her films. “I think her parents, because they knew that she was destined for greatness, I think they just always filmed her along the way, and so that’s the documentarian’s dream.”

This archive served as the bedrock of Keepin’ Country Cool; an honest and vulnerable look at a country music singer who Scott describes as “the real deal,” someone who is authentically herself, regardless of whether the camera is on or off.

Middle of It 

Scott’s team, in tandem with Wilson’s personal photographer Erick Frost, captured raw, vulnerable moments for Keepin’ Country Cool. In the doc, Wilson is incredibly honest about the emotional and physical toll of fame; her desire for motherhood and a family; and what keeps her grounded so she can keep writing songs. 

“I was raised the way where you fall off a horse, you get back up, you like, knock the dirt off, and get back on and ride. I think this documentary shows that side of me, but I also think it shows a side of me that I just have not showed people,” says Wilson. “It’s a scary thing being vulnerable, but what I’ve learned even just through my songwriting is there’s a lot of strength in being vulnerable and showing that side.”

When production started in October 2024, Scott and her crew decided to edit the documentary during production, a generally more expensive decision but a smart choice for this film. Working through post-production while collecting new footage gave the crew clarity on the documentary’s overall direction and what coverage they still needed to tell Wilson’s unfiltered story. 

So when Netflix acquired the film, Scott noted how elated she and her team were about the opportunity to share it. She also noted how filmmaker-friendly the streaming platform was while they finished the edit toward the end of 2025. 

“They changed hardly anything, but it was more that they just elevated it,” says Scott about working with Netflix. “They saw how special it was, and they knew, like, ‘Okay, we want this.’ And then they helped us through the finishing.” 

When the completed documentary was accepted into SXSW as one of the festival’s headlining films, it was a full-circle moment for Scott, who had been a fan of the festival for most of her life; she had been coming to SXSW in both a music and filmmaking capacity for at least 20 years. 

“I hung around touring bands in my twenties and we used to go and play SXSW. We played some parking lot showcases,” says Scott. And then kind of transitioned into the film stuff. [This] was the second time I’ve gone with a film having its world premiere.”

But the film’s premiere wasn’t just about the red carpet glitz and the VIP parties at a prominent festival for Scott. Reconnecting with Wilson, her band and her family at the festival after months apart was an incredibly special moment.

“We got to know her really well, but we really got to know Duck [Wilson’s fiancée]. We became very close with her band. So it was like seeing all my old friends from the road,” says Scott. “There’s a relationship that you build on the road with people, and so then when you see them, like, they’ll be my friends for life. It’s like the sweetest thing in the world.” 

It’s all about the people, which is another parallel between Scott and Wilson’s perspectives. When asked what it meant to “keep country cool,” Wilson said it was just as much about community as it was about carrying a musical legacy. 

“What I hope people see from this is that the country community that I come from are people who just welcome you with open arms and take people in — the kind of people who give you the shirt off their back,” says Wilson. “And I think that’s pretty cool.”

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool premieres on Netflix on April 22. To learn more about Lainey Wilson, follow her on Instagram at @laineywilson. You can also follow director Amy Scott on Instagram at @amyelizscott . Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool was produced by Teton Ridge Entertainment, Sandbox Studios, and MakeMake in association with Shark Pig Studios.