There’s one thing amusingly meta about watching Riley Keough watch a Fleetwood Mac efficiency. The true band’s affect on Daisy Jones & the Six, by which she stars because the titular Stevie Nicks–esque singer, has been well-documented. However Keough was shocked to be taught that one of many group’s authentic members has, in truth, acknowledged her sequence.
The day earlier than our Zoom name, Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham—whose relationship with Nicks impressed the characters of Daisy and Billy Dunne (performed by Sam Claflin)—posted a TikTok alluding to renewed chatter about their breakup. Buckingham posted a clip from a 1997 efficiency of “Silver Springs,” a searing kiss-off music Nicks wrote about Buckingham. “I heard we’re speaking about that ’97 ‘Silver Springs’ once more,” he wrote.
Once I alert Keough to this all-important growth, she instantly pulls the video up on her laptop computer. “I have to see this proper now,” she says. “I’m losing our interview as a result of I have to see if that is pretend information.” Keough watches the TikTok with delight, smiling in a dazed manner earlier than commenting beneath the video with three easy phrases: “Sure we’re.”
The truth that Buckingham felt the necessity to give Daisy Jones a nod is proof of the present’s spectacular attain. Based mostly on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel, the Prime Video sequence has hit primary on the streamer; its accompanying album Aurora, that includes the forged singing fictional ’70s hits, peaked at primary within the US on iTunes. It’s undeniably the most important function of Keough’s profession to this point—and a second that she’s known as “cosmic.” However stepping right into a highlight that she’s tried to shirk most of her life took a concerted effort, Keough tells me.
The 33-year-old actor is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and daughter of Lisa Marie Presley. By the point she reached highschool, she had referred to as each Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage stepfathers. “I grew up with a household that was very a lot within the public eye, and my childhood was actually intense in that manner, particularly within the ’90s and early 2000s,” Keough says. “It was most likely just like what the Kardashian children expertise now—not with the ability to exit the entrance of buildings and having to sneak round and never with the ability to do…” She trails off. “Simply lots of consideration, not with the ability to do regular issues. I actually began to understand regular issues in life—with the ability to go to the espresso store and sit there.”
As an grownup, Keough has largely evaded the nepo child dialog (and dissection of her private life) by appearing in indie tasks, together with American Honey and Zola. (One of many obtrusive exceptions is 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Highway, by means of which she met her Australian stuntman husband Ben Smith Petersen. The 2 now share a new child daughter.) “I didn’t actively make decisions that have been clearly going to vary my life,” she says. “I used to be at all times making an attempt to navigate how I can carry out and now have this factor that’s actually particular to me, which is with the ability to do regular issues on this planet. Subconsciously I used to be at all times working this fashion, avoiding issues that felt…I don’t know, that may change that for my life.”
Daisy, with its built-in fan base and tangential ties to her musical pedigree, looks like it might have completely derailed the plan. However within the final 5 years, Keough says, she gave herself freedom to say sure. “I did know that Daisy Jones was going to be an enormous present. I simply stopped caring as a lot concerning the consequence,” she explains. “Finally it was simply one thing that in my soul I felt like I wanted to do. I additionally felt like I needed to do one thing that may deliver pleasure to my life. I’ve been by means of quite a bit in life previous to Daisy, and I simply needed to be in an area at work that felt like enjoyable and never heavy, and darkish, and critical. And the surroundings of that present was all of these issues.”
Embracing Daisy additionally meant studying to sing and play devices, which the forged did by way of digital band camp throughout a pandemic-induced delay. The fruits of Keough and the forged’s labor are on full show within the season finale, the place Daisy Jones & the Six carry out their closing live performance in Chicago. Carrying a classic gold Halston cape, an homage to Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Mud Girl,” Keough’s Daisy sings like she is aware of it’s the final time. These dwell performances have been filmed over every week of in a single day shoots in New Orleans, the place Keough and her cohort would sing till the solar rose. “It was completely chaotic, nevertheless it was the second we’d all been ready for,” she says, including, “There wasn’t part of us that felt like we have been actors anymore.”
LACEY TERRELL
Keough’s emotionally charged efficiency consists of a great deal of heated glances at Claflin’s Billy. At one level within the finale, a newly-relapsed Billy tells Daisy that they’ll “be damaged collectively” as a result of his spouse Camila (Camila Morrone) has left him. However after 10 episodes value of self-destructive conduct, Daisy declares, “I don’t wish to be damaged”—a second of company not afforded to the character in Reid’s ebook.
“She simply very merely doesn’t need this for herself anymore—particularly not this fashion, not the best way that he’s coming to her. It’s not that model of Billy that she’s in love with. She’s in love with all of Billy, however she’s principally been round him sober,” Keough explains. “So seeing that that is what she’s bringing out of him doesn’t really feel good to her. It’s a second of energy for her to go, ‘I’m going to stroll away from this.’”
Daisy’s substance abuse, which Keough has stated she approached with explicit sensitivity “as a result of that is one thing I’ve skilled in my household,” is exacerbated by each her untenable dynamic with Billy and the crippling lack of affection she’s obtained from her mom.
Motherhood is a serious preoccupation for Daisy throughout the ultimate episodes. She wards off having youngsters for concern of inflicting the form of trauma Daisy skilled upon them. Then, after a crushing telephone name along with her absentee mom within the finale, Daisy shouts, “Subsequent time you wanna hear my voice, how bout you attempt the fucking radio.”
“I didn’t expertise it personally, however I’ve seen [that mother-daughter dynamic] with a number of folks in my life. And it’s completely heartbreaking,” Keough says. “Some individuals are fortunate to have moms which are very nurturing and loving, and a few folks aren’t. That may be a place of nice wound, when both mum or dad isn’t displaying up in the best way that the kid desires them to. It’s purported to be the one one who loves you it doesn’t matter what. And so while you don’t expertise that, I may see how that would flip into, ‘Effectively, I’m not lovable as a result of the one one who’s supposed to like me greater than something on this planet doesn’t.’ To not say I don’t suppose her mother ever liked her, nevertheless it’s a really sophisticated relationship and lady.”
