Based on the best-selling novel of the same name from Taylor Jenkins Reid, the Amazon Studios/Hello Sunshine series Daisy Jones & The Six tells the story of the meteoric rise and crash-and-burn implosion of the iconic 1970s band, fronted by Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin). The two charismatic singers are brought together to explore their shared love of music, but while their combined artistry is magic, their personalities clash, becoming toxic for everyone around them and eventually tearing them apart. As their story is recounted directly by the band, through their personal truths and the songs that defined them, you’ll learn how desire and determination, and fame and success, can’t always overcome it all.
During this interview with Collider, author/producer Reid and executive producers Scott Neustadter (who also developed the story for TV) and Brad Mendelsohn talked about how pie-in-the-sky ideas about this adaptation quickly turned into a reality, Reid’s insight into the human condition, the fun of living in this specific world, and remaining faithful to the source material while expanding the story.
Collider: Taylor, this whole process has moved much quicker for you than what normally happens. This TV series was set in motion before the novel was even out. What has this whole experience been like for you, selling the book, selling the rights for TV, having the book come out, and now having the TV series come out? Are you still up in the clouds somewhere?
TAYLOR JENKINS REID: You’re assuming that I’ve processed it. I was writing for a long time, before I wrote Daisy Jones, but Daisy Jones felt very special and like a really great opportunity for an adaptation. Any time I finish a book, one of my first calls is Brad [Mendelsohn]. He reads it, and then we sit down and talk about how we could see it going. Anytime you’re a woman writing stories about women, you hope Reese [Witherspoon] calls. You hope for that, the way people hope to win the lottery. But with this one, we had our fingers crossed. Like with anything, you don’t necessarily think it’s gonna happen, but it did happen. I feel incredibly grateful to be able to have put together this team, and to have done it so quickly. When Brad and I first started talking about it, we had many conversations and we came up with pie-in-the-sky ideas about who we’d dream to work with. It was really Brad who said that our first stop should be Scott Neustadter, and I feel incredibly grateful that there was just the one stop. The dream scenario was, “What if Scott Neustadter adapted this for Reese Witherspoon’s company? Let’s see if that could happen.” And then, it did, and I feel very, very lucky.
BRAD MENDELSOHN: And Scott is married to Lauren [Neustadter], who runs film and TV at Hello Sunshine.
SCOTT NEUSTADTER: It’s a family affair. I thought I went rogue when I slipped it to Lauren. I didn’t realize it was in the cards.
REID: I remember having a conversation with Brad, where I really had wanted to work with Hello Sunshine, and I really thought that the Scott Neustadter idea was fantastic. What came up was, “Well, his wife did just start Hello Sunshine.” And so, the idea was to send it to Scott Neustadter and see if he told his wife. I didn’t think it would actually work, I will be honest about that. I didn’t think that I could get so lucky, as to be able to work with Lauren and Scott and Hello Sunshine, all at the same time.
MENDELSOHN: We’ve all been doing this a long time, Scott and Lauren and Taylor. For that to come together in the way that it did, basically in the weekend that it did, was magic.
Brad, not to make things awkward with you sitting next to Taylor Jenkins Reid right now, but not every book gets translated into film or a TV series, so what is it about Taylor’s work that really lends itself to that?
MENDELSOHN: I mean, what isn’t it, to be honest? She starts with incredible characters and puts them in settings that we all wish we had lived through or have been through, during that time, whether it’s in the sixties, seventies, eighties, or beyond. At the end of the day, she has this insight into the human condition that I find wildly compelling. Obviously, now, millions of other people have also found that, as well. And she puts women at the center of her stories and is always driving the power of female friendship. In particular with this adaptation and this book, with the relationship between Daisy and Camila and Karen, she’s putting those stories at the front and center of all her work. And then, Scott and the rest of the writing team did an amazing job centering those stories in this adaptation.
Scott, what was the biggest challenge for you, in figuring out how to translate the experience you had reading this book into the TV show? This book is laid out in such a way that it doesn’t seem like it would be immediately easy to figure out how to do all that and how to break it into episodes. How did you figure all of that out?
NEUSTADTER: It really started with just falling in love with the book so much that it was all I was thinking about. I wanted to spend all of my energy doing exactly what you said, figuring out, “What’s a good entry and exit point for an episode? Where would we and how would we take the book and play with that?: It was just such a joy to live in that world and to be the custodian of it. Television meant that I got to just do exactly what I wanted, which was live in the world for a really long time. It’s the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing I thought of before I went to sleep, for six years now. As a screenwriter, you usually work on a thing for three months, and then you move onto the next thing. This was a really special kind of thing. I don’t know any other project that I would want to spend as much time in than this one, but it was a joy.
Taylor, what was the moment for you, during the production, when you were just like, “Okay, this is exactly what I hoped it would be”?
REID: There were plenty of moments, whether I was on set or I read a script or someone got cast, where I thought, “This is going really, really well, and I’m happy with where it’s going.” But I mean this very sincerely that, to me, Scott coming on board was how I knew everything was gonna be fine. I really felt that way. And similar to all the members of the cast, he can’t take the compliment, but it’s true. I really genuinely believe that Scott Neustadter is one of the best writers working today. He’s incredibly talented at understanding how to take an adaptation and remain faithful to the source material while adding and expanding a story and telling it again for the audience, a second time. Since choosing him, I have not been worried and I knew that it was gonna be great. So, I have been very validated in the final product because, even though it was all his work, I’m like, “I was right.” He did a great job.
NEUSTADTER: That’s very nice of [Taylor] to say, but [she] did all the hard work. We were just translators.
Daisy Jones & The Six is available to stream at Prime Video.