Who wants to be in Sam Claflin’s band?
Amidst a landslide of nostalgia in film, TV and music, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel Daisy Jones & the Six turned an enquiring eye towards the glory, marijuana-hued days of 1970’s rock n roll. Based on the professional success and personal tumult of Fleetwood Mac during this time period, the filming rights were swiftly picked up by Reese Witherspoon’s prolific production company Hello Sunshine.
Set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on 3 March, the show is led by Riley Keogh, aka Elvis’ granddaughter, who plays the eponymous leading lady. Keogh's character is a thin facsimile for Stevie Nicks, while Sam Claflin (complete with crazy hair) plays tortured rock God Billy Dunne, and real life popstar Suki Waterhouse appears as the band’s keys player.
Told in a documentary format akin to VH1’s famous Behind the Music series, the actors play aged up versions of their characters reminiscing on the wild west days of the LA rock scene, recalling the hedonistic impulses they battled during their time on top.
From her early days as a blues singer to unmatched Fleetwood Mac classics. Yes, including “Everywhere”
The film required its players to essentially become a band themselves, with each undergoing music lessons so they could play their characters with a degree of realism. The singing features zero dubbing, which led Keogh to find her inner songbird through extensive coaching, as she told Vanity Fair: “I was like, I have to do it. I’m gonna go to this vocal coach, and he’s gonna teach me how to fucking belt, whatever I need to do to get this. It really became about pushing myself to do things I’ve never done before.”
Claflin, playing a Lindsay Buckingham stand-in, also had to learn how to play guitar, sing and just about everything else after lying to the producers about his musical ability. But he sacrificed the best part of three years of his life to become Billy Dunne with the chameleonic British actor – who played Oswald Moseley in Peaky Blinders – even undergoing a physical transformation to match the lean and lithe physiques of '70’s rockstars.
With a soundtrack full of songs created for the show by Bob Dylan guitarist Blake Mills and Phoebe Bridgers’ producer Tony Berg, this looks set to be a rock 'n' roll show for the ages.
After a career playing shirtless hunks, Daisy Jones & The Six is letting the actor access his most personal material yet
A trailer for the series has now been released and starts with an older Jones looking to camera, interview-style, saying: “I know I said I would tell you everything. But how much of everything do you really want to know?”
It suddenly jumps back to a nostalgic montage of stage performances, car journeys and behind the scenes in a recording studio. The soundtrack is electric, and helped by audience applause, throws the viewer straight into the feeling of being in a hot, sweaty gig in the 70s. We're treated to brief glimpses of what looks like a bohemian wedding, a new birth and a physical fight between two characters. Finally a blue-lit Jones is on stage side-eyeing the camera with a smile as she sings in a husky voice. The trailer, just a minute and a half, packs quite the punch.
