From the Pages to the Screen
The Promising Future of “Daisy Jones and The Six.”
By Amanda Healy
Photo by Pinterest
TikTok is a very powerful social media app, with different communities that can bring attention to different products, businesses, and creators. One side of TikTok is “BookTok,” which showcases different authors and books. Taylor Jenkins Reid gained a lot of popularity when her books started trending, including “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” and “Malibu Rising”. One book, “Daisy Jones and the Six”, is now an Amazon Prime mini series.
The book and show are told through interview segments and flashbacks to the 70s. These flashbacks show the story of The Six and Daisy Jones, and how they come together as a band that amounts to unprecedented fame. The first episode starts with text on the screen and a montage of future scenes that will be shown. This places the audience in the time period, and directs their attention to the drama of addiction that will unfold throughout the series. As someone who normally prefers the book compared to the screen adaptation, I really enjoyed the first three episodes and feel they are authentic to the text.
From the beginning, Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) takes on the leadership role as a brother and the lead singer. From there, the audience is introduced to Graham Dunne (Will Harrison), Warren Rhodes (Sebastian Chacon), Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse), Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse), and then Daisy Jones (Riley Keough). The show was beautifully cast, as they look like an authentic rock band. Additionally, the show does a great job of featuring the age progression in the first episode. The actors that played the younger versions of the main characters were perfect.
Going into the first episode, I was apprehensive about seeing how they would film the interview portions of the series; this is a key aspect of the book and impacts the story arc. The first three episodes successfully conveyed the transition between the present and the past, and I am incredibly excited to see how the rest of the story unfolds through this style.
The original soundtrack is my favorite part of the show, as music is the soul of the book. Reid incorporates actual songs and their lyrics as the band forms and progresses. The cast sings and plays the instruments for the show, and the soundtrack can be streamed on all platforms. Having the music from the pages come to life in the show is a different way to bring the band to life. Their sound is authentic, which continues to show the importance of music.
The first couple of episodes of “Daisy Jones and The Six” are a very strong start to the rest of the mini series. I loved the book, and this incredibly talented cast is bringing the rock n’ roll insanity of the 70s to life.