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Coming soon to Amazon Prime Video, Daisy Jones & The Six is the highly-anticipated screen adaption of the popular novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid (who also penned The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo).
If, like me, you still have yet to read the book, better bump it to the top of the list. As per my colleague Sarah Gill (whose opinion on pop-culture-related matters I trust beyond all else), it’s stunning and I’ll love it. That’s all the convincing I need. Doesn’t hurt that Reese Witherspoon also gave the book her seal of approval back in 2019 though. Selecting it as one of her book club reads, she was so impressed that she later went on to buy the rights to adapt the novel for the small screen via her production company Hello Sunshine (the same company to thank for the Where The Crawdads Sing movie with Daisy Edgar-Jones late last year).
Here’s everything you need to know about the 12-episode limited series.
Taking the form of a live-action rock series, the upcoming adaptation will stick pretty closely to the plot of the original book it’s based on – playing out as a documentary of sorts told from the perspective of the band members and those closet to them. Centred on the whirlwind rise to fame of 70s band The Six and their beautiful lead singer, Daisy Jones, it’s every bit as sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as you might expect. In fact, in a blog post she wrote for Hello Sunshine, Jenkins Reid revealed that she actually took inspiration from the real relationship between Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham for the story.
“Two years ago, when I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing “Landslide.” How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them. I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh,” she explained.
According to the Good Reads description of the book:
“Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity… until now.
“Daisy is a girl coming of age in LA in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
“Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
“Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realises the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.”
As fans of the book will know, music is central to the entire storyline and it’s been reported that Phoebe Bridgers (yes, Paul Mescal’s rumoured ex-fianceé… we can bring everything back to him if we try hard enough) has been enlisted to help on that front. Speaking to Rolling Stone, singer-songwriter Blake Mills reveals that he was also recruited to give his input and “create a band, conjure up their sound, what they’re writing about and how they play.”
“We genuinely are a full band that can play songs, which is amazing for a group of actors that didn’t have these skills,” said Suki Waterhouse, a model with a musical history of her own (stream “Good Looking” immediately, you won’t regret it).
Filming kicked off way back in September 2021 with Riley Keogh (Elvis Presley’s granddaughter and Michael Jackson’s stepdaughter!) posting a photo on Instagram from their first day on set. “I am so proud of how hard everyone has worked to bring this story to life,” she wrote at the time, adding that “all of the writers have done SUCH an incredible job”.
“I read the book, and I felt like, this story is going to bring people happiness and joy. This is going to take people out of their lives for a minute,” Keough told Elle in an interview that summer. “It’s just a fun, fun, fun show. Of course, [Daisy]’s got addiction issues, and there’s sadness and heartbreak, but she’s also this powerful, incredible woman who doesn’t really give a sh*t about anything. When you play these characters, it’s liberating, especially when you’re playing a liberated woman.”
Things officially wrapped a couple of months later in May 2022. “What a test it has been. The best of my life. It’s been my therapy. I so hope I make you proud,” Keoghh’s co-lead Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games, Me Before You) said of the experience.
Aside from Keogh (who plays Daisy) and Claflin (who plays Billy Dunne), other big names involved in the project include Suki Waterhouse as keyboard player Karen Sirko, Sebastian Chacon as drummer Warren Rhodes, Timothy Olyphant as band manager Rod and model-turned-actress Camila Morrone as Billy’s pregnant girlfriend, coincidentally also called Camila.
The bad news is that you’ll have to wait until March 3rd for the first episode to arrive on Prime Video (new episodes will drop weekly every Friday throughout March). The good news is that gives you enough time to read (or re-read) the book in the meantime.
Amazon has also just released the first full trailer for the series which you can watch below. Listen out for the dreamy duet, “Regret Me” between Keogh and Claflin.
Excited? Us too.