In this segment of Arts Talks, writers from the Books and TV beats came together to discuss Amazon Prime’s newest miniseries “Daisy Jones & The Six.” Adapted from the New York Times bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, “Daisy Jones & The Six” follows the rise and fall of a fictional band from the ’70s that was loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
Ava Seaman, Books Beat Editor: What were your guys’ immediate reactions to the series?
Serena Irani, TV Beat Editor: From the first few episodes alone, I wasn’t that into it. But then as it progressed, I got a lot more invested. I liked Daisy the most and Riley Keough’s (“The Terminal List”) performance. And I thought the music was okay!
Annabel Curran, TV Senior Arts Editor: I think the build-up for it was really crazy. I was so excited for it. I’d been waiting and waiting and waiting and then they released the first two songs and I was like, “I am losing my fucking mind.” But then I watched the first episode and I feel like it was fine. But then when I read the first chapter of the book, I was like, “This is gonna be revolutionary.” So it was like it didn’t live up to my expectations right away. But I don’t know if I will feel the same by the time I get to the finale. I think I like the female characters the best. And then, Sam Claflin (“Love, Rosie”) is hot, but you know, he’s very pretty, but that’s really all.
Kathryn Hemmila, Daily Arts Writer: I thought it was a little slow at first. I watched the first few episodes and I had a bit of a hard time getting into it, but I liked how it built a lot by the end. I was pretty invested in it, especially because they changed a decent amount from the book. So, I wasn’t actually sure what was going to happen. Most of the time when a book has been adapted, I know where it’s going, but there are a lot of differences (between the book and TV show), so that was kind of cool.
Logan Brown, Daily Arts Writer: I was super excited about it and built it up in my head a lot. Over Spring Break I was like, “I’m gonna sink into the series,” but it was really slow at the beginning which I wasn’t really expecting. You do need to build the storyline because books have a really easy way of doing that, so it’s just so different with different types of media. I thought the characters were cool and I liked how they portrayed the ’70s era but it was definitely not as overwhelmingly intense as I thought it would be in the beginning.
Graciela Batlle Cestero, Daily Arts Writer: I feel the same way. I like the book a lot more in terms of the set-up because, like Logan said, it was constantly really thrilling and gripping. But there were also chapters in the beginning of the book where I was also like, let’s get through this so I can get to the good part. That’s how the first few episodes felt. I also agree that my favorite characters were the female characters. Especially Riley Keough, she’s a perfect casting for Daisy. Sam Claflin is obviously very nice to look at and he portrays Billy very accurately. I was scared of Camila Marrone (“Love Advent”) as Camila because I’m really attached to the character, but I think she did a good job too.
AS: I was pretty underwhelmed at the start. I wasn’t invested until like five episodes in, and then we really got to see the dynamic between Daisy and Billy. I did like the casting, but I didn’t understand why they made Karen English. I understand Suki Waterhouse (“Zaya”) is English but it was just weird. And then when they changed Daisy’s upbringing…
AC: Okay that was dumb.
AS: I was like, her name’s not Margaret. Her name was always Daisy Jones. I do think Claflin played Billy really well because the whole time I just kept thinking “Billy is such a prick, Billy is such a prick” and Claflin’s portrayal was confirming that. However, the dynamic between Camila, Daisy and Billy was really weird in the show. I feel like Camila is such a strong character in the book. I just don’t see her as jealous, and I feel like she came off as insecure and it made me mad.
AC: Why did they make her look bad? That was unnecessary.
KH: In the book, the whole point of Camila and Billy was that their love is perfect. And she’s very open to knowing that he’s not always going to be faithful, but he loves her the most and he’s going to be loyal to her. And in the show, they made it more like she was telling herself that and it wasn’t this mutual understanding between them. I didn’t like at the end where she leaves him because her whole thing was that she wants this life with him. She wants to raise a family. Her number one priority ends up being her kids. And she’s going to keep the life that she’s built for herself — she’s strong in that way. And I didn’t like that she kind of gave into this “jealous woman” stereotype.
LB: Also, I feel like the dynamic between Daisy and Camila was very different (in the show) than it was in the book. In the book, you can tell they love each other and they really care for each other. But in the TV series, it’s almost like a competition. I feel like the book kind of shows this thing where two women can love the same man, and they don’t have to hate each other for it. And I think that’s really powerful. And that’s what I really liked about the book, but then the series it’s more like they’re fighting over this man. That’s not the main part of what the book was about.
GBC: There was this really important scene between Daisy and Camila at the end (of the book) that they completely cut out and I was really, really mad about that. There’s a specific line that Camila has in that scene where she tells Daisy, “He’s not going to leave me,” and she knows that. And there’s like parts of that scene where she lowkey comes off as mean, but I didn’t think it was mean, she’s just trying to comfort Daisy but also trying to let her know that she’s not going to sugarcoat this for her. And they gave that line to Billy! Billy was the one who said, “Oh, I’m not gonna leave (Camila).” And I was like, no! Then, in the end, they made Daisy tell Billy to go and look for Camila, and that just didn’t happen in the book. I understand that an adaptation means that some changes are going to be made, but I think the book’s ending would’ve been really easy to portray on screen. It wasn’t something that had to be changed in order for it to translate well to the screen. And it was such an important moment that really concluded the character arcs that Camila and Daisy had both been going through the entire book, and that just sort of ended in another way. That’s why Camila, for me, comes off in a very different way in the show.
But I also had a friend tell me that she liked the TV version of Camila because she thought that the version of Camila in the book was too good to be true. Like, no woman is that trusting, no one is okay with everything or self-assured. So, I don’t know, that’s also something I considered.
SI: I agree. I think that the ending scene with Camila and Daisy was important. But I kind of liked how in the show, Daisy is the one that comes to her own realization that she needs to get help for herself, that it’s more of her decision to leave the band and go to rehab because she knows that it’s what’s best for herself right now. I also felt like Camila, to me, doesn’t have as much of a presence in the book. In the book, she kind of just chimes in when it’s relating to Billy and whatnot. But in the show, I felt like she was present more and had more screen time, which was nice.
AS: Do you think that it translated well from page to screen? This book is really unique in the way that it’s set up as interviews and discussions between (spoiler!) Billy’s daughter and the rest of the people related to the band. But the TV show was mostly scenes and not the interviews. And I don’t know if the TV show did TJR’s book justice.
GBC: I was also kind of thrown off by that, but I sort of made peace with it by thinking about how, in the book, every single character is an unreliable narrator. They’re all telling Billy and Camila’s daughter, Julia, what they want to tell her to preserve their image and reputation. For example, I had a friend tell me that they thought that Camila’s responses to certain events in the book seemed really calculated and really well thought out, but at the moment, people normally don’t have the time to think about things so thoroughly. In the TV show, I got the impression that they were sort of trying to show what really happened instead of just what every character thought happened, because if they did that they would have to record the scenes a thousand times because everyone had a different opinion about everything.
LB: I really like in the book how contradicting all of the different accounts were, and I’m not sure if that’s picked up as much in the series. I wish they would have cut from interview to interview where they say completely different things because I think that was so comical in the book. They showed that a bit with Graham (Will Harrison, “Madam Secretary”) and Karen’s ending, but they didn’t show it a lot throughout the series. It would have been fun to see a little bit more of the unreliable narrators that were shown throughout the book.
KH: I liked how with a screen adaptation, you can obviously get the visual aspects and I think we dove a lot more into some of the side characters of the book in the TV show that I really liked. One of my favorite parts of the TV show was Graham and Karen’s relationship and then I even liked Warren a lot. Although I didn’t really like him, it was also cool seeing a lot more of Eddie (Josh Whitehouse, “Poldark”) and his character development, and we got to see more of his motivations behind disliking Billy and his attitude toward the band in general. I thought that was a good addition because it made it seem like they were real people in the band versus just being there mostly for the development of Daisy, Camila and Billy.
AC: If we’re going to talk about side characters then where the hell was Pete? Why did they cut him out? Like, no one really cares about Pete that much, but I was just kind of annoyed because it’s Daisy Jones and the Six. Where are the six? There are five! It is just not adding up. But I digress.
AS: Something that threw me off was the fact that Eddie liked Camila. That was so weird. It’s such an easy way out in a TV show because of course there had to be some random backstory about how Billy “stole” his girl. That wasn’t true in the book.
GBC: At first, I liked that Eddie was in love with Camila because it gave me more of a reason to not hate Eddie. Billy is like a really, really bad person. But there’s a way in which, in the book, you sort of start caring for him in some ways because every person is layered. I think TJR does a really good job of making her characters very layered. So seeing Eddie be so annoying all the time made me mad while reading the book. And I really liked that scene where Warren put him in his place. I definitely understand Eddie in the sense that Billy is really controlling, like when he goes and changes the entire album without telling any of them because that’s obviously infuriating, it’s their work as well. But there wasn’t really much substance to that hate that Eddie had. He was just mad that he wasn’t the band’s lead.
But then it was weird that Eddie liked Camila because it made the whole Camila, Daisy and Billy love triangle a lot more complicated in a bad way. At the end, I was really mad because Camila told Billy that no other woman will love him like she loved him. But she did a very similar thing by cheating on Billy with Eddie, so it’s like you can’t really blame Billy because of the amount that she was blaming him in the show. They were trying to make her check herself by making her say, “Oh, we’ve both done things,” but it just wasn’t enough redemption I guess.
KH: I think there were some changes in dynamics in the relationships with Camila, Billy and Daisy that I didn’t appreciate that much in the TV show. I didn’t like that they made Billy and Daisy have an actual, physical relationship in the show. I didn’t want them to kiss because I think (the lack of a kiss) was so powerful in the book. They have this magnetism, they’re drawn to each other and there’s so much tension that never gets fulfilled because they don’t fully act on it. And there’s so many moments where one of them almost does and then the other one breaks away, saying “we can’t do this.” I think that expresses how much they can’t be together, but they should be and shouldn’t be. Having them actually act out on their feelings took away from their dynamic. As Ava was saying, it’s just the easy way out again.
AC: I feel like the tension between them is due to the fact that they never got to act on (their feelings toward each other), but it’s what drove the plot of three-quarters of the book. So to have them resolve it so early, took away from the relationship that they had which is that they understood each other so well intellectually and emotionally, but also they were both lowkey shitty people and connected on that. To turn their almost-obsession with each other into this straightforward romantic relationship felt odd and not true to what I thought it should be.
SI: Okay, I feel like a real contrarian. I like that they actually got together. I felt like in the book, it was very obvious that they didn’t talk about it, but I assumed that they definitely cheated at some point. Considering both of their characters — and Daisy’s lack of impulse control — to say that she wouldn’t have even tried with Billy, I don’t know. I get that the first kiss was kind of out of place, but the later ones made sense. Billy was at a low, Daisy was at a low.
AS: Actually, they were both quite high.
SI: They both have such volatile personalities. If they’re spending all this time with each other and you put them in a room together, of course something’s gonna happen. It would have been weirder for the show not to have anything happen. And like Graciela was saying, if we consider the show to be like what really happened and not just their accounts of it…
GBC: In the end of the book, when you find out that Julia is the interviewer, it obviously changes a lot of things and it makes you reflect. If you reread the book, you’re like, “Oh, this specific scene is funky.” In the show, we get to see their first kiss, but if you look at Billy and Daisy’s separate interview scenes, they’re both silent. Julia asked Billy, “What did you do to make her sing like that?” And he doesn’t say anything. Then, there’s a shot of Daisy being interviewed after the scene happens, and she’s just grinning — she doesn’t say anything. So maybe that is what happened, but they just didn’t say it.
AS: What did you guys think of the music? Did you have any favorite songs or favorite performances that stood out? What was your reaction to it coming out before the show?
AC: They released the two singles first, and I thought it was cool that when you look at the songs on Spotify — it’s as if Daisy Jones & The Six is a real band. I really liked that. I thought that was really cool. I was kind of tickled I guess that it was out, I was like, “Oh my god, they’re like a real band.” But then when the first two singles came out, I was like, this is good. “Look At Us Now (Honeycomb)” was really, really good — that’s my favorite. “Regret Me” was good except I really don’t like that they took out the line that says, “When you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll.” Dude, that line was killer, why did they do that?
And when I listened to the rest of (the album), I could hear the inspiration. I could hear the connections to those ’70s bands like Fleetwood Mac. I don’t know what I expected it to sound like and I think I have my favorites and my least favorites. Overall, I think it was all good. But it’ll never live up to what’s in my head. It’s not like I was like making up songs but I feel like it’ll never hit the same. I want to see them live or something. You know what I mean? But I did love that they had the real music to go with it and released it like a whole album format and I thought it was cool.
LB: I got really excited and I think it did its job — it hyped people up for this series. I got really into it; with every new drop, I was listening to (the new song) a lot. I wish in the series, though, that they would have played more of the songs because I feel like they didn’t really highlight all of them. And I haven’t really listened to the album that much, so I really only know the lead songs that they always played — it was a bit repetitive. I really liked “The River”; the last performance was excellent. In general, I thought (the album) was a really pleasant surprise because I never really read the songs when I read the book. I kind of just skipped over them because I couldn’t hear them in my head. So it’s cool to have something to actually think about now when I’m reading the book.
KH: In the book, it’s supposed to be like, one of the best albums of all time. As I’m listening to it, I have a hard time believing this was like the songs of the summer or the defining music of the ’70s in this universe. What is so magical about the (book’s) album is that you’re never going to be able to recreate that or formulate that, like, specific vibe.
GBC: I had a whole moment when “Regret Me” was released and I made a chart and started highlighting everything that was the same between the book version and the recorded version of the song. The only thing that was the same was the line, “Regret me.” I was like, this is … interesting. But in the end, I really liked the music. I’ve been listening to it a lot, but I definitely do have my favorites and I think that the show plays a role in that because they feature certain songs over others, like, “The River,” for example. I also like “More Fun to Miss” but my thing is that it’s supposed to be the equivalent to, “Impossible Woman,” which in my mind was a slow ballad, like a really heartbreaking “Silver Springs” type of song. I think it’s a great song and her voice sounds insane, but it’s just a different vibe than what I expected. And then the same with “Regret Me.” When it first came out, I was like, this is fully a duet; this is not Billy’s backing vocals like they made it seem in the book — he is singing with her. So I did enjoy that the show kept in the fact that the band recorded the song without Billy, but the song itself does sound a lot more like a duet.
I can’t really believe that (the album) is the Rumours equivalent, but it’s good. And it’s impressive because (the cast) learned how to sing and play their instruments.
AC: Does anyone know if Claflin is actually singing on the songs? I have a hard time believing that he is.
GBC: I’m pretty sure he is. But why did he try to eat the microphone anytime he was singing? Why was he making out with the mic?
AS: When (Daisy and Billy) were sharing the mic, they were so close! And I was like, how do you feel comfortable with someone on your cheek?
GBC: I felt like I was intruding on something.
SI: It would have been more subtle if they just made out right there on stage. I loved Daisy’s performances though — Keough did such a great job with that. Every time Daisy would come on stage, I couldn’t really pay attention to anything else — she was a star.
AC: I feel like that’s how it’s supposed to be: her star quality that she has. That’s why I didn’t love the way that they changed her upbringing and her backstory. In the show, she was scrimping and saving and I didn’t love that they changed her name. Maybe it’s unrealistic to have her be striking and amazing but the whole thing is she is that girl, she’s just so cool. She’s the reason that Daisy Jones & the Six ever happened; she just totally took everyone by storm. In some ways (the changes) made it a better story because maybe it’s just not super believable that this girl just has everyone wrapped around her finger right away, and it’s just too perfect. But that’s just who she is, like she’s just crazy talented and she just has this way about her. I wish that they captured that part of her essence or personality.
GBC: A thing that I did like that they changed about her was that when she was writing her songs in the book, she was very stubborn to accept changes or be challenged. She walked away from Teddy like a thousand times because he kept saying she needed to change things and that her songs weren’t complete — she was always really mad. In the show, she was very hard working in terms of her music and she was constantly reworking her songs. And I think that justified the fact that she was so intent on participating in the songwriting process for Aurora. In the book, I loved her because she’s just the insufferable character that you’re gonna love no matter what, but I kind of didn’t understand her entitlement to participate in the songwriting process.
SI: I think (the show) established her better.
AS: I did like Daisy and how she was portrayed, but I felt like she was a little too smiley.
GBC: Her speaking voice was really, really sweet and kind.
AC: Like, don’t you know this girl is a bitch? And we love that about her.
AS: Yeah! She was supposed to be a broken and beautiful girl who was never sober. In the show, we didn’t get the crazy Daisy, which I felt like was integral to her character. The portrayal of the drugs and the smoking was very explicit, I was shocked. I was like, is it legal to show that many people smoking cigarettes these days?
Something I did like about the show was Simone’s character.
GBC: I really enjoyed her arc, it made her much more of a substantial character instead of just Daisy’s friend. In the book, I didn’t like that she existed solely to be there for Daisy. I liked the addition of her sexuality as well. I also liked that they made Warren (Sebastian Chacon, “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels”) Latino. Representation is always nice.
SI: What did you guys think about the change in the timeline?
GBC: The show was really good at accurately setting the scene, it looked very ’70s. But they went cheap on the 20-years-in-the-future thing. The character eliminations were sort of cheap too. I know it was stalled with COVID-19 but the set was so insane, so I feel like they could’ve gone the extra mile. I was happy that they kept Camila’s ending. But I didn’t like how they left it up to viewers’ discretion what illness she had. In the book, it was very clear she died from lupus. In my mind, it was important for them to include that because there’s a lack of representation for invisible illnesses like that.
LB: It’s interesting that you can see that Camila looks a little sick throughout the interviews, but I think they did a really good job at hiding it and letting you see why by the end. The end of the show was a bit rushed, it wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be. Maybe I built it up because I love the book so much.
KH: In the TV show, they have Billy follow through on the “call Daisy up” thing. In the book, Camila’s final message to her daughters is to give their dad some time but then to go call Daisy Jones. And the reader is left with, “Did he call her?” I like that it’s open-ended and you don’t know what happens. But in the TV show, they show Billy following through with that. It would’ve been very on par with Billy’s character not to call Daisy because he can’t stand her. I didn’t see a point in changing the ending.
AC: To me, the ending of the book is definitive because even if Billy did call Daisy, it never would’ve lasted.
LB: The ending was less satisfactory because Camila and Daisy’s relationship wasn’t as strong. Why would she tell him to go to Daisy when they didn’t have a bond? They were barely friends, so I didn’t believe it as much as I did in the book.
AC: Right, they build Camila up as this jealous woman, but then she’s like, “I guess you can call your ex-girlfriend!” No one would say that.
KH: Billy calls Daisy his twin flame in the book but Camila is his water to survive. In the show, Daisy and Camila just have dueling personalities and it’s as if he could work with either of them, which is odd. They also imply that Billy and Camila weren’t together for a few years after the band broke up and that he had to win her back. It’s probably more realistic, but in the book, Camila’s confident in the fact that they’ll never leave each other. Even though their relationship wasn’t perfect, they stuck together.
LB: The book portrayed Camila as the support system. She’s a strong woman behind the fragile band they’ve created, which has obviously broken apart after just a few years. But in the show, it’s all about Daisy and Billy. In the book, it’s about love and family. It was an interesting difference between the two.
AS: That concludes our “Daisy Jones & the Six” Arts Talks.
Daily Arts Writers Kathyrn Hemmila, Logan Brown and Graciela Batlle-Cestero, Books Beat Editor Ava Seaman, TV Beat Editor Serena Irani and Senior Arts Editor Annabel Curran can be reached at khemmila@umich.edu, loganvb@umich.edu, gbattlec@umich.edu, avasea@umich.edu, seirani@umich.edu and curransa@umich.edu.