Everything to Know About the TV Drama

Back to the ’70s. If the source material is any indication, then Amazon’s upcoming TV series Daisy Jones & The Six will take viewers on a trip to a world of flared pants, arena rock and backstage drama.

Based on the novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six tells the story of a fictional rock band called The Six, fronted by an enigmatic woman named Daisy. The book was a huge hit upon its release in March 2019, but Amazon picked up the TV rights nearly one year before it even hit shelves.

Reese Witherspoon chose the novel for one of her Reese’s Book Club picks, and her production company, Hello Sunshine, teamed with Amazon to produce the series.

“As soon as I started reading Daisy Jones & The Six, I immediately fell head over heels in love with it, and I’m thrilled to be bringing it to the screen with Amazon and Jen Salke, whose passionate pursuit of the material spoke volumes,” the Oscar winner said in a statement in July 2018. “With [Scott] Neustadter and [Michael H.] Weber, two writers I deeply admire, stewarding this project, I am so confident that Daisy and her band’s journey toward finding their voice will leave just as permanent a mark with viewers around the world as it did with me.”

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In November 2019, Riley Keough signed on to play the titular Daisy Jones, who was partially based on Stevie Nicks. The Zola actress is descended from rock royalty herself: her grandfather is Elvis Presley. (Her parents are Lisa Marie Presley and musician Danny Keough.)

“I am so so proud of how hard everyone has worked to bring this story to life,” the Golden Globe nominee wrote via Instagram in September 2021 when the show began its first day of filming. “All of the writers have done SUCH an incredible job. Everyone at Amazon, the whole crew on the show side and also the music side working tirelessly and tiredly to make us sound good. The cast for working so hard learning how to do things we’ve all never done. Thank you thank you thank you!!”

The American Honey star appears opposite Sam Claflin, who plays Daisy’s bandmate Billy Dunne. The Me Before You actor learned to play guitar for the role during the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns, which began shortly after production was originally set to begin.

“It’s got everything a good TV drama requires, really,” he told Entertainment Tonight of the show in September 2020. “The one thing it didn’t have is an actual person that can play guitar, because that’s something I did not have in my utility belt going into this. But it’s something that I fortunately had a bit more time to do because of where we find ourselves.”

Keep scrolling for more details on Daisy Jones & The Six:

In addition to Jones and Claflin, the series features Suki Waterhouse as Six keyboardist Karen Sirko, Will Harrison as Six guitarist Graham Dunne and Sebastian Chacon as Six drummer Warren Rhodes. Nabiyah Be appears as Daisy’s best friend Simone Jackson, while Camila Morrone stars as Billy’s wife, Camila Dunne. Josh Whitehouse is set to play Eddie Roundtree, who appears to be based on the book character Eddie Loving, who was one of The Six’s guitarists. Timothy Olyphant will appear as the band’s manager, Rod.

The series will release on Amazon Prime on March 3, 2023.

The book covers the band’s early days in Billy’s garage through their rise to fame following the addition of Daisy as a singer. Plot details for the series haven’t been released, but it seems likely the show will follow a similar trajectory. Jenkins Reid has said she was partly inspired by the drama between Fleetwood Mac members in the 1970s, so expect plenty of band infighting and infidelity.

While Daisy Jones is not part of a series, it does contain Easter eggs to some of Jenkins Reid’s other books, including Malibu Rising and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. A TV adaptation of the latter novel is also in development at Netflix, but it’s not clear whether the two shows will connect at all.

The book includes plenty of song lyrics for The Six’s music, and several real-life musicians have been tapped to bring those words to life. Blake Mills, a singer-songwriter who’s worked with Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey and The Chicks, is on deck to write music for the show. Tony Berg is also on hand as a producer, and Malcolm McRae and Kane Ritchotte were tapped as vocal coaches for the actors.

“I have to say, I’d never picked up a guitar before I got this part. And, you know, having read the book, it wasn’t overly clear that I was due to be playing because we took some creative freedom and slightly shifted the parts a little bit,” Claflin told Vanity Fair in December 2022. “Meaning that I was going to be playing not lead guitar, thank God, but rhythm guitar. I had to learn how to hold the guitar, how to strum a guitar. I had the biggest journey to go with the singing as well.”

Keough, for her part, told the outlet that she felt her own type of pressure to sing since she is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter. “I didn’t even know how one gets to be able to sing loud. I went to a vocal coach and I was like, they need me to belt. I sounded so bad that I started crying. I was like, I can’t do it, and when I can’t do something it lights a fire in me to be able to do it,” she recalled. “I was like, I have to do it. I’m gonna go to this vocal coach, and he’s gonna teach me how to f–king belt, whatever I need to do to get this. It really became about pushing myself to do things I’ve never done before.”

In December 2022, Vanity Fair released sneak peek photos from the upcoming series. Some of the images included the band playing on stage, arriving on their private jet to adoring fans and doing press conferences.