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Breaking It DownDoes the Cast of ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Sing and Play Their Own Instruments On the Show?
Get ready to fall in love with the cast of Daisy Jones & The Six. The Amazon Prime series follows the members of a make-believe 1970s rock n’ roll band in the height of their career. The star-studded cast includes Riley Keough as lead singer Daisy Jones, Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne, Camila Morrone as Camila Dunne and Suki Waterhouse, Will Harrison, Sebastian Chacon and Josh Whitehouse completing the rest of “The Six.”
Following the casting announcement, fans of the book were worried if the actors would be playing their own instruments or actually singing on the show, as the music plays a pivotal role in the beloved work written by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Keep reading to see behind-the-scenes info about Daisy Jones & The Six.
Does the ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Cast Sing, Play Their Own Instruments?
Fans of the book should be delighted to hear that every song from the show was recorded by the Daisy Jones & The Six cast. Every instrument and every vocal are all the actors’ hard work.
Not only is that impressive, most of the cast had never picked up an instrument before booking their rock n’ roll band roles, either.
Suki, who plays Daisy Jones & The Six’s pianist Karen Sirko, explained that after the cast was announced at the beginning of 2020, filming was delayed for two years due to COVID-19 — however, that gave the actors time to hone their musical skills.
“That was a huge gift that that studio was open to us for two years and we would go like, three hours a day and work to become a band,” she explained in an interview with Insider. “That was basically the goal to be like, ‘We could go on tour.'”
Did Riley Keogh and Sam Claflin Really Sing on ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’?
Riley, who plays the band’s front woman, spoke about learning how to sing for the series during the auditioning process in an interview with Vanity Fair. After sending a video of herself quietly singing to Fleetwood Mac, the (real) ’70s band that serves as the inspiration for Daisy Jones & The Six, casting directors told Riley she would need to learn how to “belt,” or sing loudly, if she wanted the part.
“I was like, what does that even mean?” Riley told the outlet. “I didn’t even know how one gets to be able to sing loud. I went to a vocal coach and I was like, ‘They need me to belt.”
The actress, who is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, was told to try belting Lady Gaga‘s Academy Award-winning song “Shallow” in her car “to get in the mindset.”
“I was like, ‘Are you out of your mind? It’s not an easy song to sing,'” she recalled. “I sounded so bad that I started crying. I was like, ‘I can’t do it,’ and when I can’t do something it lights a fire in me to be able to do it. I was like, ‘I have to do it. I’m gonna go to this vocal coach, and he’s gonna teach me how to f–king belt, whatever I need to do to get this.
She added, “It really became about pushing myself to do things I’ve never done before.”
The California native quickly got the hang of it, and after she sent a video of herself singing to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” the show had found its Daisy Jones.
Riley’s costar and on-screen love interest Sam Claflin, said, “seeing her come alive in that role is just, I mean, it’s mesmerizing, it’s magical.”
And is that Sam’s real singing voice in Daisy Jones & The Six?
After impressing the casting directors as an actor in an early audition, screenwriter Scott Neustadter told VF, “we found out he wasn’t as musical as he might have [said].”
Sam, who grew up with a metalhead father, had some gaps in his rock n’ roll knowledge, to say the least. Shortly after deciding to audition with Elton John’s “Your Song” (not quite rock n’ roll), he mixed up the Beatles with Michael Jackson.
“So I had that much of a journey to go on,” he laughed. “I knew nothing. But thankfully, they saw something in me and knew that I was sort of pliable and flexible and willing to learn and wanting to learn and willing to sacrifice myself for, like, three years.”
Is ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Releasing an Album?
Not only does the cast record every song mentioned in the original book, but each track will be released in a completed album called Aurora — the same album that skyrocketed make-believe Daisy Jones & The Six to fame. Aurora will be released alongside the show’s first three episodes, on March 3, 2023.
