Rock ‘n romance: Prime Video premieres ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’
Transport yourself back to the wild Los Angeles rock ‘n’ roll scene of the 1970s on a magic shag carpet ride with a muchanticipated new limited series. The first three episodes of “Daisy Jones & the Six” drop on Prime Video Friday, March 3. Based on the novel by author Taylor Jenkins Reid, the musical drama details the rise and fall of the titular fictional classic rock band fronted by lead singers Daisy Jones (Riley Keough, “Mad Max: Fury Road,” 2015) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin, “Peaky Blinders”).
Skyrocketing to fame in the late 1970s, Daisy Jones & the Six disappear at the pinnacle of their career, calling it quits after a sold-out show at Chicago’s Soldier Field, per a January Prime Video news release. Years after the break, the former band members agree to spill all about their split, revealing how both romantic and musical relationships went up in flames after that fateful show.
Having come from one of the most famous musical families in history, Keough is a natural fit to play the enigmatic rock star, Daisy Jones. Granddaughter of Elvis Presley, Keough was certainly raised hearing stories of the highs and lows of rock star fame, but she named her mother, the late Lisa Marie Presley, as her inspiration for the role. Keough told People magazine in December 2022 that she was “raised by somebody who did their own thing and didn’t really care what other people thought. She was definitely inspirational to me.”
The rest of the main cast are Camila Morrone (“Valley Girl,” 2020) as Camila Dunne, Will Harrison (“This Is a Film About My Mother,” 2022) as Graham Dunne, Suki Waterhouse (“Misbehaviour,” 2020) as Karen Sirko, Josh Whitehouse (“The Knight Before Christmas,” 2019) as Eddie Roundtree, Sebastian Chacon (“Penny Dreadful: City of Angels”) as Warren Rojas, Nabiyah Be (“Black Panther,” 2018) as Simone Jackson and Tom Wright (“Medical Police”) as Teddy Price. “Justified” star Timothy Olyphant makes a guest appearance as Rod Reyes in the series.
“Daisy Jones & the Six” has been a big project for Prime Video — it acquired film and TV rights for the novel before it was even published — that expands even beyond the screen. A teaser trailer for the series was released in January, highlighting a real song by the fictional band, called “Regret Me.” Clips of the series play over the song, which helps to imply that maybe there is some forbidden romance between band members on the horizon. “Regret Me” was officially released in tandem with the trailer, and a full album called “Aurora,” with contributions from musicians Phoebe Bridgers, Jackson Browne and Marcus Mumford, releases on premiere day, Friday, March 31, from Atlantic Records.
You may have heard some rumors that “Daisy Jones & the Six” was loosely based on the tumultuous personal and professional lives of a certain real-life band, and that would be true. In an essay for Hello Sunshine, Reid wrote about watching Fleetwood Mac’s 1997 performance of their song “Landslide” in the MTV special “The Dance” as research for the novel, fixated on “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.”
Reid also drew inspiration from more recent former bandmates. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reid shared that she was fascinated with the folk duo the Civil Wars, who abruptly split up in 2014 after releasing two albums together. “They wrote these incredibly romantic and intimate songs, and they would perform them so beautifully and so intensely,” Reid explained, adding “they’re both married to other people, and one night they just break up [the group].”
Mystery and intrigue have followed the implosion of both bands, leaving listeners with less than the full story of their breakups. In the official trailer for “Daisy Jones & the Six,” Daisy is sat down for a confessional interview, and speaking to someone beyond the camera, she says, “I know that I said that I would tell you everything, but how much of everything do you really want to know?” Ten episodes exploring the behind-the-scenes drama of a group of talented musicians doomed to split in a clash of egos provide fan service for what we will never know about our own favorite bands who’ve parted ways.
“Daisy Jones & the Six” is executive produced by “Big Little Lies” star Reese Witherspoon, whose production company Hello Sunshine has been behind some of the most successful book-to-screen adaptations of the last decade, including 2014’s “Gone Girl” and “Wild” and, more recently, 2022’s “Where the Crawdads Sing.” “The Morning Show” producer Lauren Levy Neustadter and “Rim of the World” (2019) producer Ben Mendelsohn also executive produce.
Tune in for the first three episodes of “Daisy Jones & the Six” when they drop Friday, March 3, on Prime Video, with new episodes releasing every Friday through March 24.