The "Daisy Jones and the Six" TV Adaptation Just Finished Its First Day of Filming

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Novels as inventive as Daisy Jones and the Six don't come around often. Published in March 2019, Taylor Jenkins Reid's New York Times bestsellingbook recounts the story of the rise and fall of a fictional ‘70s rock band, with a clever twist: It's structured as the transcript of a music documentary.

Since it's comprised entirely of dialogue, Daisy Jones and the Six has an inherently cinematic quality. But thanks to an upcoming TV adaptation, we won't need to imagine Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones whispering about each other to a camera—we'll be able to see them do just that.

Back in July 2018, months before the book was published, Amazon ordered a 13-episode limited series based on Daisy Jones and the Six. The TV adaptation will be produced by Reese Witherspoon under the banner of her prolific production company, Hello Sunshine. Witherspoon has long been a champion of the novel: She chose Daisy Jones and the Six for her March 2019 book club pick.

Judging by what we know of the book, the TV adaptation will be a delectable blend of insider gossip, love triangles, and nostalgia for the bygone '70s. If anything, the story will only be made richer by the transition to screen: All of the song lyrics, so carefully analyzed in the book, will be paired with melodies at last.

Here's everything we know about the upcoming series.

The show recently began filming, which means a release date is on the way.

Daisy Jones and the Six began filming in September 2021. Star Riley Keough posted a series of behind-the-scenes pictures from the first day, including the ensemble cast hanging out on bikes that say, appropriately, "Daisy Jones and the Six."

"I am so so proud of how hard everyone has worked to bring this story to life," Keough wrote. Based on this timeline, we predict the series will be released in 2022.

Daisy Jones and the Six is about a legendary rock band.

In fact, some would call it the greatest band of all time. Set between 1970 and 1980, the novel tracks how The Six, a traditional rock band, came to make music magic with Daisy Jones, an ephemeral solo artist. Together, they created a one-of-a-kind album, then abruptly broke up forever. In this oral history—think VH1's Behind the Music—the band members finally explain what happened.

The band's downfall has everything to do with what makes it so special: The chemistry between Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne, The Six's denim-clad de-facto leader. Whereas Billy constantly struggles to resist the lifestyle's maelstrom of sex, drugs, and wild living, Daisy lives—and creates—among the chaos. When they meet, Billy must add another entry to his list of temptations to avoid: Daisy herself. But Billy can't deny the magic that happens when their minds, and bodies, come together.

And it's based on a real band.

When designing Daisy Jones and the Six, Reid says she was inspired by Fleetwood Mac, a band in which real-life romances between bandmates made it into the music. "I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey [Buckingham] watched Stevie [Nicks] sing 'Landslide.' How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them. I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh," Reid wrote in a guest post for Hello Sunshine.

Riley Keough leads a star-studded cast.

Introducing the ingenue herself: Rising Hollywood star Riley Keough will play Daisy Jones. "I’m so honored to be your Daisy," Keough wrote on Instagram in November, after the news was announced.

The casting for this musical drama couldn't be more perfect. Keough is actually the granddaughter of rock 'n' roll legend Elvis Presley (her mother is Lisa Marie Presley). Fittingly, Keough's first-ever feature film appearance was in The Runaways, about an all-female band in the '70s.

Since her screen debut in 2010, the 30-year-old actress has racked up credits across film genres, appearing in Mad Max: Fury Road, Magic Mike, and Steven Soderbergh's heist drama Logan Lucky. She also earned a Golden Globe nomination for her work on the first season of The Girlfriend Experience.

In November 2019, Camila Morrone joined the cast as Camila, the girlfriend of Billy Dunne. Camila “follows the love of her life in his pursuit of rock stardom only to discover her own potential along the way," per an interview Morrone did with Vulture. The 24-year-old Argentinian-American actress recently received rave reviews for her breakout performance in the indie Mickey and the Bear. She's also made headlines for being Leonardo DiCaprio's current girlfriend.

Sam Claflin will play the Billy Dunne.

Best known as Finnick Odair in the Hunger Games movie franchise, Sam Claflin has been cast as the moody, intense rock star Billy Dunne. The success of Daisy Jones and the Six hinges of Claflin and Keough's chemistry–but we're hopeful!

Reese Witherspoon is producing the drama.

The project is backed by some major Hollywood power players. The series will be co-produced by Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine, and Amazon Studios.

"As soon as I started reading Daisy Jones & The Six, I immediately fell head over heels in love with it, and I’m thrilled to be bringing it to the screen with Amazon and [head of Amazon Studios] Jen Salke, whose passionate pursuit of the material spoke volumes," Witherspoon told The Hollywood Reporter. Hello Sunshine's Lauren Neustadter will also produce.

Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, the writing duo behind 500 Days of Summer and The Disaster Artist, will write the series, and Will Graham will serve as showrunner. Niki Caro (director of 2020's Mulan) will direct multiple episodes, including the pilot, and is credited as an executive producer.

Daisy Jones and the Six is only the latest in a series of recent projects spearheaded by the actress-turned-producer. Previously, Witherspoon produced the blockbusters Wild, Gone Girl, and HBO's Big Little Lies. In March 2020, Hello Sunshine's adaptation of Celeste Ng's beloved 2017 novel Little Fires Everywhere premiered on Hulu, starring Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.

The series features original music.

Could Daisy Jones and the Six be the new Star Is Born? The show will feature a slate of original music, set to be distributed on Amazon Music.

If you read the book, you could've seen this coming. Author Jenkins-Reid is so gifted at writing songwriting that she left readers a treat at the end of her book: The complete lyrics to Daisy and Billy's collaborations, like "Honeycomb" and "Aurora." These lines from "A Hope Like You" are a taste: "But maybe I should stake my claim / Maybe I should claim my stake / I’ve heard some hopes are worth the break."

At first, Reid struggled with the songwriting aspect of Daisy Jones. After all, she's a novelist by trade—she's written a total of six books. Then, Reid cracked the code: Write the songs as Daisy, or as Billy. “After finishing the first draft, I realized that I had to write the songs entirely in the voices of the characters. Once I understood that, I was able to tap into their voices and go for it,” Reid told the New York Times.

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