Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
SPOILERS ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for all 10 episodes of Daisy Jones & the Six streaming now on Prime Video.
“How did we get here? How do we get out?” As Riley Keough’s Daisy belts out those words at her band’s final performance, the lyrics of “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” take on a whole new meaning in “Daisy Jones & the Six.”
A lot has changed since we first met the members of the Six: Billy has become a father and gotten sober, Karen and Graham have fallen in love and faced an unexpected pregnancy, while Daisy has just suffered a terrifying overdose.
In the finale of the 10-episode miniseries, Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide, scenes from the band’s larger-than-life concert are interspersed with vignettes of each character’s struggles that led to the breakup of the band. In the end, it turns out that Billy and Camila’s daughter Julia was behind the camera the whole time for their documentary interviews.
Co-showrunners Scott Neustadter and Will Graham spoke to Variety in February to unpack the finale, the changes they’ve made from the novel, and their hopes for a second season.
In the book, Camila’s last wish is for Billy to call Daisy. The show takes it a step further as we see Billy show up on Daisy’s doorstep. Why was that the right ending for the series?
Scott Neustaedter: All I ever want to do in my life is emulate the ending of The Graduate, which is my favorite thing to do. The openness is really just so beautiful. I’m always drawn to stories like this. I really don’t like happy endings, but I really appreciate a good hopeful one. I think the version of this story that ends in the most hopeful way is that they’ll try to see how it feels to be back in the same room after all this time. And I don’t think we know how that’s going to go. The ending leaves the door open for a sequel. I feel like there’s a pretty satisfying conclusion, but at the same time some questions remain unanswered.
Will Graham: I think Taylor ended the book in a really, really beautiful way with a question that addresses both the messiness of life and the path it takes one down. From the moment Billy and Camila meet, and from the moment Daisy and Billy meet, I think there’s no doubt they know they’re important forces in each other’s lives, and in a way, they do each other into more of themselves – more of the person they are meant to be.
The beauty of the writing in the book, and what we’ve tried to bring to the screen, is the fact that neither of these relationships fits exactly into a box or our prejudices. Daisy and Billy try to figure out whether they should be lovers, bandmates or enemies. At the end of the day, you know that they will always find a way back to each other. I think that’s the kind of hopeful feeling we wanted to give people.
Sam Claflin (Billy Dunne), Riley Keough (Daisy Jones) Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
How did you come up with the structure of the finale and remember the moments leading up to the band’s last show?
Graham: This is an episode that we worked incredibly hard on. We nail all of the stories we told on the show, but we wanted to make it clear to the audience that every single character that goes into this concert has a lot of choice to make. The band didn’t just break up because of Daisy and Billy. It was everyone. We tried to create a moment where you can feel how Daisy and Billy could be together. But they can also, in this moment, see the versions of themselves they would become if they let themselves go down this path. You are now conscious enough to know that this is not the right path for you at this moment.
Similarly, with Karen and Graham, he is willing to give up some of what he wants for his life for Karen, and Karen doesn’t want him to do that. These big and difficult decisions that truly come from compassion and love for one another will hopefully be cathartic and fun and electric for fans.
The scene in which Camila accompanies Karen to her abortion is impressive. How did you create it for the screen?
Neustadter: There was a whole scene written in the car where they talked about it. It was one of those things that you saw in the edit and you said, ‘You know what, all we really need is the way they look at each other.’ Camila is so proud of that more than anything, mom to be and so in love with motherhood. But at the same time, she knows that she and Karen want different things and that they are different people. She loves her friend and that’s her way of supporting her and it just fits right in with what these characters would be doing in that moment.
Suki Waterhouse (Karen Sirko), Camila Morrone (Camila) Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
One of the novel’s most prominent themes is women fiercely supporting one another. How did you transfer that to the screen?
Neustadter: All credit to Taylor for setting the stage with this. All the women on this show, even the ones who have conflicts with each other, are really just good friends. They provide what the other needs when they need it. There’s this beautiful moment at the end of the concert episode where Daisy sees that Karen is hurt and rests her head on her shoulder. In the end, the show is really about humanity and how we treat each other: how can you be a good person?
Graham: Rock ‘n’ roll is something we see primarily through a male gaze and lens. I am non-binary. As you read the book you sense a different gendered perspective on the story that is still important. Yes, there is a love triangle, but it really is a triangle where all these characters love each other. Daisy and Camila love each other. But that’s not easy. Finding these answers is not easy. Daisy, Camila, Karen and Simone have really complicated, multi-layered female relationships that we just never wanted to push into territory that feels like the tropes you see sometimes. Our incredible writers’ room played a big part in that, but so did the actors.
Simone’s role is far more important in the series than in the book. How did that happen?
Neustadter: Simone as a character is really a fascinating thing in the novel. She definitely plays the role of Daisy’s confidant, and many of her plot twists in the novel help Daisy on her journey. We found Simone as a character very intriguing, but also this world of underground disco in New York that the book only flirts with. i want to live there I want to see more of that. We talked about how to achieve that and came up with a whole new Simone storyline and a little more character depth than the book gave us.
I honestly wish we had more time for this. Simone is such a cool character that she could have her own show. There was only so much we could do on this show, but we wanted to do enough to honor this character and at least hint at a completely fascinating universe on the other side of the country that we could spend a lot more time on another season.
Riley Keough (Daisy Jones), Nabiyah Be (Simone) Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
Graham: During my first conversation with Taylor, who has become one of my favorite people in the world, I said to her, “What would you want to see on the show that you couldn’t do?” She didn’t even think for a second, “More by Simone!” We wanted to give her a full life as a character. i am weird I want everything I do to foreground queer stories in one way or another.
There’s such an amazing history of disco coming out of queer and mostly black clubs at this moment that we still haven’t seen much of it on screen. When people think of disco, they still think of Saturday Night Fever. We tend to dismiss disco as insubstantial. “Just dance” is like a revolutionary statement for people from historically marginalized groups. Nabiya [Be] just has so much dignity, so much presence. The first moment she sings on the show, you just think, “Wow. It’s a powerhouse.”
The novel has a loyal following. Are you nervous about how die-hard fans will react to the changes you make?
Neustadter: Because the book is so popular, everyone has their ideas in their heads. The production version becomes the final version. The book is told as oral history. You get fragments of a story and not really the whole story. But if we show you what happened, there’s only so much we can do to avoid the truth. You can have different perspectives, you can get people to remember it differently, but you’ll still see things.
Graham: I’ve had a lot of moments over the past year bringing A League of Their Own to the screen where you’re dealing with an adaptation where people love what it’s based on. It can definitely be scary at times, but we love Taylor’s book and telling the story for TV. There are countless moments in the book where you don’t know exactly what happened. We actually spoke to some people who study memory and read quite a bit about it. We’ve learned how people look back 20 years later, how to organize their stories a little more neatly.
Our goal is to keep the feeling exactly the same, but just bring an authentic kind of chaos to the storyline. The novel asks these really fascinating questions: That moment when Camila leaves the house and visits an old friend, and you don’t know exactly what that means. What happened to her and Eddie on the show was one answer to that question. It was all an attempt to answer the questions the novel posed to us in a truly satisfying way. Hopefully fans will see that it comes from the same spirit and embrace it.
Even though it was billed as a miniseries, is there a chance of a second season?
Neustadter: I think that would be amazing. If people are interested in this story and these people, maybe we’ll get the opportunity. leave the door open Why not? If people enjoy what you do and want more of it, that’s not a bad problem.
Graham: We had the most amazing time doing the show. To me, this question stems from Taylor and if she has another chapter in her head for these characters. If we had the opportunity, I think without question everyone involved with the show would show up with the bells on.
This interview has been edited and abridged.