Daisy Jones and the Six Boss Explains Why the Premiere Slow-Burn Is So Essential to the Series

[Warning: The following contains spoilers from the first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six. Read at your own risk!]

Daisy Jones & The Six is one of the most highly-anticipated series of 2023 due to the built-in fan base of Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel of the same name that the series is based on. The novel and the series tell the story of a fictional legendary '70s rock band (with serious Fleetwood Mac vibes), the one perfect album they recorded, and why they broke up at the end of their first and only tour. That story is told through a set of interviews conducted by a mystery documentarian with the band members looking back on the most iconic portion of their lives. 

"I think that in any book, certainly the ones that I write, I am trying to make them about a lot of things. They're not just about one particular thing. There are certainly things that stand out, but it has to be about the complexity of, all of the nuances in it," author Taylor Jenkins Reid told TV Guide about finding the right team to adapt her novel. "It meant that we had to find someone to steer this project that understood all of that complexity and was interested in every angle of the story, not just one in particular. That was so clearly Scott Neustadter, not just because he's one of the best screenwriters working today, but also because he understood this story from the very, very beginning." 

Daisy Jones & The Six: Release Date, Cast, Trailers, And Everything to Know

Neustadter – who also has The Fault in our Stars and The Disaster Artist adaptations on his resume – created the series with his writing partner Michael H. Weber. Neustadter was also co-showrunner with A League of Their Own's Will Graham. They, along with director James Ponsoldt helped bring the Sunset Strip that built Daisy Jones & The Six in Reid's novel to life. 

"We had a really great team of collaborators… We really made it a priority to be as period-authentic as possible," Ponsoldt explained. "We really shot at the actual amazing L.A. and Hollywood locations where a band like this would have played. We got a level of wish-fulfillment in getting to play in these spaces and go along with the band." 

While even audiences who didn't read the novel can appreciate how the crew put together a set that feels like the 70s, they may have also noticed that the first three episodes of the series give a lot of Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and a lot of The Six led by Sam Claflin's audacious Billy Dunne, but the two don't actually cross paths until the end of Episode 3. 

"The show, just like the book, does take a second to kick into full gear," Graham told us. "We looked at so many different ways of structuring it and thinking about it. Ultimately, they all would have taken us pretty far away from the book and we didn't want to do that. We wanted to really take people through those beats." 

A big part of the reason for the slow burn in the first three episodes is to help the audience feel closer to all of the key players in the story. While the band wasn't together for that long, it's important for everyone to understand where these characters came from and why they act the way that they do once the band is actually formed. The creative team hopes that bringing the audience along for that journey gives them a more introspective look at the band. 

"A lot of times you see stories of people in rock and you're almost watching them from the outside. You're thinking, 'These people are so cool and so talented. I could never be like them.' In this case, we really wanted to put people on the bus with the band, if that makes sense," Graham elaborated. "We wanted them to feel like they were with them and not with the audience looking at them. Because of that, it became really important to kind of grow up with them. You really feel like you know them and you're with them by the time they get famous and people start really paying attention to what they're doing."

Of course, the most important people to understand before the band starts working together are Daisy and Billy. The premiere episodes introduce us to an infant Daisy and showcase the cold and suppressive household she grew up in. We understand why she's drawn to the Strip at such a young age, and how her experiences there give her a warped sense of worth, while at the same time forcing her to develop a brash exterior. Meanwhile, Billy is determined to get The Six out of small-town Pennsylvania and eclipse the shadow of his absentee father, all the while struggling with how much like him Billy is turning out to be. 

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"What you're seeing in Daisy and Billy in these first three episodes is people trying to find their voices and trying to believe in themselves when each of them has a shadow inside of them," Graham said. "They're fighting against those demons to find a way to show up in their lives and in their music." 

Those demons are not gone by the time the two crash into each other's orbits, and that sets up the drama for everything that's to come in the series. However, even without knowing what's coming, the two are acutely aware that everything has changed now that they've met. 

"What you see at the end of Episode 3 when Billy and Daisy are in a room for the first time, is they become more than themselves," Graham explained. "They don't know if it's because they're falling in love or because they hate each other, but they know that they've just met someone really significant." 

How the two come together, and destroy everything they build, will be revealed as the series continues this month.

The first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six are streaming on Prime Video.