Over the past few years, book-to-show adaptations have taken over the big screens, offering fans many opportunities to see their favorite characters and stories come to life. Recently, a new installment perfectly orchestrated what is incredible about book-to-screen adaptations
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel “Daisy Jones & The Six” has been adapted into a ten-episode television show on Amazon Prime. The show premiered on March 3, and episodes were released weekly until the finale on March 24.
Across the high school, Reid’s name is seen all over, with classrooms filled with her popular works such as “Malibu Rising” and “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” One of her more recent works, “Daisy Jones & The Six” is another fan favorite. “Daisy Jones & The Six” follows the chaotic rise and fall of a 1970s band, whose story is loosely based on the iconic singing group Fleetwood Mac, with bands having their messy break-up and mystical leading female singer.
This book is written in the style of an interview, with all the band members telling their true stories decades after the band’s infamous break-up, making it very unique. The multiple perspectives allow readers to price together the full truth through reading.
The story starts with childhood friends Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), Graham Dunne (Will Harrison), Warren Rhodes (Sebastian Chacon) and Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse) forming a band in the hopes of making it big. They soon add Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse) to the mix and eventually, make it to Los Angeles on the verge of stardom.
After a rough patch, manager Teddy Price (Tom Wright) suggests an addition to the band: charismatic and fiery Daisy Jones (Riley Keough). Daisy’s passion-filled talent combined with her and Billy’s chemistry and dynamic quickly make the band rise to the top and eventually lead to their downfall.
It is often hard for books to be successfully adapted onto the big screen, especially if they have as big of a following as “Daisy Jones & The Six,” full of fans with high expectations. Despite this, I believe the show was excellent both on its own and compared to the original book.
One thing that made “Daisy Jones & The Six” such a good story for me was the character of Daisy Jones. Daisy is a completely free-spirited and determined singer-songwriter with an incredibly lively personality. Her character loosely resembles iconic Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks.
Daisy is played by Riley Keough, who is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, so seeing her own musical talent was highly anticipated. I thought Keough was a perfect fit for the character of Daisy. She looked exactly like I imagined while reading the book, and her acting was arguably perfect. In addition to her personality and acting, Keough’s singing voice was spot-on for the role. Despite not being a singer prior to being cast, Keoguhs’s voice was a perfect mix of raspy and smooth, fitting for both the time period and the character. Keough perfectly captured the essence of Daisy Jones and this was a great casting choice that did the original character justice.
In fact, all of the casting choices were spot on. Seeing characters who readers only imagined in their heads finally come to life is something incredibly exciting, and “Daisy Jones & The Six” did so successfully. I thought the whole cast did a remarkable job playing their characters. Something that really made the casting of this show different was that all cast members actually trained how to play the respective instruments their characters played, which I thought was very cool and shows that the developers cared about making the project the best it could be.
Since the story of “Daisy Jones & The Six” follows a band, music lyrics were included throughout the book, and hearing these songs come to life was something fans were anticipating. Following the show’s release, Aurora, which is the band’s best-selling album in the book, was released on music streaming platforms. I haven’t quite got around to listening to the entire album yet, but from the songs I have heard, it perfectly encapsulated the vibe the band has in the book. Some of the most iconic and popular songs from the book were “Honeycomb” and “Regret Me,” which are now my two favorites from the album.
An important and sometimes difficult part of a book-to-screen adaptation is following the original source material. The screenwriters did change some things, such as completely omitting Pete Loving, a member of the band, changing some of the lyrics of a few of the songs, and changing the way Billy Dunne met his wife, Camila Alvarez (Camila Morrone). But, none of these changes affected the viewing experience all that much, and I thought this was a faithful adaptation that felt just like the book.
One change that I really liked about the show was the addition of an LGBTQ+ storyline with one of the main characters. Simone Jackson (Nabiyeah Be) is Daisy’s closest friend and also a rising star. In the book, her whole character has solely to do with Daisy’s life, but in the show, her story was more flushed out. Early on in the show, Simone meets Bernie (Ayesha Harris). Viewers get to see the two women fall in love during a time when this was not very accepted, and I thought this was a very interesting storyline that added diversity and representation to the production. Simone’s character was much better in the show than in the book in my opinion.
The author’s opinion of the quality of an adaption matters more than anything, and Reid credits the creators and actors for producing such an up-to-the-mark development.
“When I think of the book, now I just see [the actors’] faces,” Reid said in a Vanity Fair article. “They’ve brought such depth and charisma to it.”
In my opinion, “Daisy Jones & The Six” is a great adaptation of the original book. All of the actors did justice to their characters and the plot was well-paced and faithful to the book. I think it is definitely worth watching, regardless of whether you’ve read the book or not.
