Daisy Jones and the Six

The new Prime Video series about an iconic 1970s band is inspired by Fleetwood Mac. It was filmed in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Greece.

The series isn’t the only project to recently tap New Orleans as a stand-in for Chicago, as the new movie Hydra, which is about a four-hour ferry ride from Athens, is no stranger to the music scene. New Orleans and other locations across Louisiana, including Hammond and Baton Rouge, were selected to portray the rest of the United States. Another venue makeover took place at Whisky a Go Go, as well as neighboring shops on the strip. The series uses various filming locations to bring the fictional band’s home base, tour stops, and vacation destinations to life. The production transformed landmarks on the Sunset Strip, taking them back to their former 1970s flair, according to

Riley Keough and Sam Claflin's dueling frontman antics on “Daisy Jones & the Six” has sparked several audience theories about what real-life, classic rock ...

I saw it with my own eyes!” [Buckingham and Springsteen](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/daisy-jones-and-the-six-riley-keough-sam-claflin-band-music-1235537577/) were sources of inspiration for co-star Claflin. As did Stevie Nicks’ “warm and intimate, but cryptic” rendition of “Landslide” alongside, former bandmate, and lover, Lindsey Buckingham, which she remembers first seeing as a young teenager. And the things that were going on between Christine McVie and John McVie were really fascinating, and they show in the music. [Taylor Jenkins Reid](https://variety.com/t/taylor-jenkins-reid/), whose book introduced the world to Daisy Jones, has previously detailed several sources of inspiration in her writing including rock, disco and the whole Laurel Canyon scene. “I started with the germ of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac,” [the author said in a previous interview hosted by her publisher.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfy6hqKHg6U) But as she researched and to pull creative inspiration from a slew of ‘70s stars, — crediting Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Tom Petty and Crosby, Stills and Nash alongside Fleetwood Mac. Riley Keough and Sam Claflin’s dueling frontman antics on “Daisy Jones & the Six” has sparked several audience theories about what real-life, classic rock figures from the ’70s actually inspired these characters.

'Daisy Jones & The Six' is about a fictional rock band and stars Riley Keough as the lead singer. Here's whether or not she is really singing in the show.

I was like, I have to do it. I went to a vocal coach and I was like, they need me to belt." "I was like, I can’t do it, and when I can’t do something it lights a fire in me to be able to do it. "I didn’t even know how one gets to be able to sing loud. Although getting to that point was a process. I don't really remember what happened," Keough said during a recent press event for the series.

A woman with long hair and holding a tambourine and a man playing a guitar sing. Riley Keough, left, and Sam Claflin in “Daisy Jones & the Six.” (Lacey ...

“But because of COVID, we couldn’t start our production on time, and the three-week band camp turned into 18 months. “That meant putting the actors through a rigorous ‘band camp,’ run by [music supervisor] Frankie [Pine] and supervised by [music consultant] Tony [Berg], where for hours every day they would practice their instruments, learn Blake [Mills’] brand-new songs, work on their stage presence or otherwise just shoot the s— like real bandmates do. … Daisy Jones and The Six are real. A stunning, nostalgic, timeless album that captures the drama, pathos, and yearning of the band’s zenith and nadir all in one,” Reid shared in a statement. Neither actor had sung professionally before, and Keough recently revealed she might have actually stretched the truth when auditioning for the role. The series is an adaption of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s New York Times bestselling novel that broke #BookTok and caught the attention of series co-producer Reese Witherspoon.

'Daisy Jones & the Six' stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin and the show's music team explain how they brought the fictional '70s band to life.

“It wasn’t something that had to sound like a lost record of that moment,” he says. Mumford first heard about “Daisy Jones & the Six” from Mills nearly four years ago, and was happy to support his friend on this “epic quest” that he knew had been quite challenging. I remember it feeling extremely collaborative, open-hearted and with the free spirit that I think ends up being conveyed in the song.” “And to Riley and Sam’s credit, they stepped up.” “In all honesty, one of the best things to ever happen to this production was the fact that we had a delay,” Claflin says. “Writing this slightly embattled dialogue between these two characters was just a really fun exercise,” Mumford says. I think she was a combination of many women and men, actually.” “In that moment, the pressure also got lifted a bit. So we just kind of met and then were put face-to-face and they were like, ‘Sing at each other!'” “[Bands] spend so much time together that they know what each person’s going to do,” Pine says. “Our initial concern when Sam and Riley were cast was that it would be putting a lot of pressure on two people who had never sung professionally to be responsible for singing 25 songs. Not to worry: “Daisy Jones,” which is backed by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, recruited a stellar music team to bring the band to life.

Actors singing and pretending to be rock stars is terrible, even when it's Riley Keough and Sam Claflin. But watching them do it for 10 hours is another ...

is presented as a mockumentary (this makes sense: the book is written like an oral history) and my main thing with this is: mockumentary is a great structure for comedy, but never quite works when the story plays it straight. I am going to be moaning about this all year, because it keeps happening in 2023: this does not need to be 10 hours long. You don’t need too much of a story when the drummer has a moustache and likes to stick his head out of the battered-up van they all pooled their savings to buy. Obviously, Daisy Jones & the Six (which is based on a book that simply asks the question: “What if The songs are the whole point, so they have to be in there. I am a natural-born hater and as such I’ve always found the performance of songs woven into works of fiction to be quite embarrassing.