This is the book that ruined Reese Witherspoon’s vacation. The director of its production company, Hello Sunshine (which adapted the best-selling Where the Crawdads Sing, Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere…), was so taken with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s manuscript – even before it was purchased by a publishing house – that she begged the actress and producer to immediately give up her beach towel for the rights. Reese Witherspoon then spent 24 hours on her iPad devouring the novel Daisy Jones and The Six. Closing it, she had no doubt: yes, she was going to bid “ASAP” and offer it to Amazon Prime.
The platform had already signed the adaptation project for eight months when the book was published in March 2019 by the literary giant Penguin House. Amazon’s strategy is simple: a series on Amazon Prime boosts sales of books on Amazon and audiobooks on Amazon Audible. On this project however, they hit the jackpot before filming on the pilot even started. The book was a hit, receiving a little help from Reese Witherspoon and his influential “book club” upon its release… Daisy Jones and The Six squatted New York’s top ten bestselling book Times for 100 weeks straight! The novel has sold over a million copies and has been translated into 30 languages.
Yet it was the sixth book by the 39-year-old American author, who had already had success with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (also on the famous New York Times list for 83 weeks – there is even a still elsewhere, at the time of writing these lines, in sixth position – and will be the subject of an adaptation, on Netflix this time).
Loosely inspired by the formation and then the fall of Fleetwood Mac and the recording of their album Rumors (the one of the hits “Dreams”, “The Chain”, “Go Your Own Way”, “Don’t Stop”…), Daisy Jones and The Six tells the meeting of a singer with devastating charm and explosive talent with a group of rockers with a dilapidated leader, who become by combining their forces, the time of a disc, the most important group in the country.
The format is lively (a series of “transcripts” of interviews with the protagonists, with a surprising twist at the end) and the environment in which they evolve, exciting: the Los Angeles Strip, the tour buses, the crazy parties, behind the scenes of the stadiums… Let’s be honest, Daisy Jones and The Six is ??not a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon literature, but the story is gripping, the characters endearing, and the music so well described that you’d think you could hear it turning the pages (we even looked for the group on the Internet for a while, doubting its reality).
Taylor Jenkins Reid remains co-producer on the adaptation project. She began her career as a casting director, high school teacher, and series writer (she was behind Hulu’s sleazy Resident Advisor in 2015) before becoming one of the most influential names in popular culture. Her books follow the glamorous adventures of strong female characters, passionate lovers determined to make a career, whose destinies are often selected by the media and bookstores to accompany our summers.
In the casting, no star but a few more or less familiar faces. Daisy Jones is played by Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley (her mother Lisa Marie has just died and she is in the midst of a family battle for the inheritance), a volcanic redhead with the air of Florence the Machine, model size, mischievous gaze, in the voice of an angel. We saw her in Magic Mike, Mad Max: Fury Road, Under the Silver Lake, Zola and The Runaways, another 1970s rock band story, very real this time… But she doesn’t have her star yet at Hollywood.
His male counterpoint is Sam Claflin (Enola Holmes, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hunger Games…), good-looking without any singing or guitar talent (according to the New York Times, he was in the cast, yet unable to name a single song of the Beatles), but who does the job as a battered frontman determined not to end up working on construction sites. His ingenuous young wife and photographer is played by Argentinian actress and model Camila Morrone, better known for being Leonardo DiCaprio’s ex-girlfriend than for her roles (Death Wish, Mickey and the Bear…). Yet she has a future, so she bursts the screen.
Luckily for these actors, filming was delayed by the pandemic, so they were able to take singing and music lessons on a daily basis. As a result, the chemistry or tension in concert scenes is palpable. Blake Mills wrote the true/fake soundtrack for this fan-awaited series, along with Phoebe Bridgers, Jackson Browne and Marcus Mumford. Aurora, the true/false debut album by Daisy Jones and The Six, will even be released at the same time as the first episode. For the moment, the two singles unveiled do not make us take off like those we had imagined, but they have already accumulated several million plays. It bodes well.
Because the adaptation, quite faithful to the book, is frankly a success. The 10 episodes broadcast on Amazon Prime from March 3 leave a smell of cigarettes, whiskey and cocaine on our wise winter nights. Jealousy, pettiness, desire, temptation, secrets of the heart and confusion of feelings… Rock lovers and those nostalgic for the 1970s will appreciate it.