How the Adaptation of ‘Daisy Jones & the Six’ Was the Perfect Fertile Clay for Co-Creator and Co-Showrunner Scott Neustadter

This interview was conducted in April 2023.

Based on the New York Times best-selling novel, Daisy Jones & the Six, follows the story of the iconic 1970s band, fronted by two feuding yet charismatic lead singers, Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne. Drawn together by personal and artistic chemistry, their complicated musical partnership catapulted the band from obscurity to unbelievable fame. And then, after a sold-out show at Chicago's Soldier Field, they suddenly called it quits. Now, decades later, the band members finally agree to reveal the truth. Set to the soundtrack of original music from the Daisy Jones & the Six—this is the story of how an iconic band imploded at the height of its powers.

It's rather fascinating to see how music and story can thread into a character's journey, or conversely, how a character's journey influences their story and in this case, their music writing, just like it's done in Amazon's Daisy Jones & the Six. 

Scott Neustadter, the co-creator, and co-showrunner behind the hit series spoke with Script about how he immediately gravitated and connected to author Taylor Jenkins Reid's manuscript, to challenging himself as a writer and dipping his toes in the TV space, and how the music writing was integral to the show, and so much more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: What initially attracted you to the original material and the structure that Taylor [Jenkins Reid] laid out in her book?

Scott Neustadter: I always joke that I went into screenwriting, because I want to be a music supervisor. My favorite thing in the world is music and music stories, and have always wanted to work in that role, but don't have any ability to. And so, knowing that, Taylor's manager, he got her manuscript sent to him, and he'd read it. And he was like, ‘I love it. It's great. Can I show it to some people?’ And I was one of the people that he thought to show it to, which was really nice. And I read it, and I was probably like, 100 pages into it and was like, ‘This is everything I love in the world.’ 

And also, my wife had just started working with Reese [Witherspoon] for Hello Sunshine - right after 500 Days of Summer, I had lunch with Reese when she was like, ‘What's your dream project?’ and I was like, ‘Probably working on something to do with Fleetwood Mac's Rumors.’ And we spent the rest of the lunch just talking about how much we love Stevie Nicks - and I said to Laura, ‘You have to get your hands on this, because I know that Reese is going to love it too. And you're gonna love it.’ And we'd never worked together. And I was like, ‘What if we did it together? It would be so fun.’

I wasn't supposed to do this, by the way. The manager [laughs] only sent it to me. But I just sort of couldn't believe just how much I was loving it before I even finished it. And then when I finished it, I was like, ‘We're going to do this together. We will stop at nothing to convince Taylor to go with us to adapt this.’ And I think a lot of people were thinking about it as a movie. And that was all my experience was; I had only ever really done movie stuff. But I couldn't figure out the movie version. I didn't know that you could do justice to this book in 100 pages. Plus, I just loved it so much. I wanted to live in that world for a really long time. And so, for that, it just screamed TV series to me.

Sadie: This definitely needs to have those hours, particularly to live in that world.

Scott: Exactly. So many characters, so many relationships, so many ups and downs. And it really takes place over a decade. And then it's these people looking back on their lives from many years later. And so, there's that structure that you have to play with. And yeah, I felt like the two-hour movie version was probably going to feel like a Wikipedia page of this band, just like the highlights. But a TV series would allow you to get under the hood a little bit more and spend some time with it and really live in the world in the way it's sort of meant to be.

Sadie: Yeah, I think what's really fun about the book and the show was the showing of creating and making an album and the relationships around the band and also the music writing partner collaboration.

Scott: It was cool. There's the songwriting part of it, there's the recording part of it, there's the touring part of it, there's so many different, for me at least, fascinating elements of a musician's story, and then the yeah, like you said, the collaboration and then the kind of collaborating with somebody that might be better than you, somebody that brings stuff out of you that you're scared of and also the romantic feelings that are always driving underneath it. All that stuff just felt like such fertile clay to grow something cool with.

Sadie: Speaking of collaboration and showrunning for the first time, what was that like working with Will Graham?

Scott: We were pretty in lockstep I think with what we thought was gonna make for the best adaptation. We had an awesome writers’ room that just really helped flesh out all the voices and all the characters. Showrunning was not really in the cards for me. I didn't want to screw this up. And so, we brought Will on who had more experience than me.

I remember at the beginning, I was kind of like, ‘Eleven people are never going to all agree on anything, How are we gonna get anything done?’ [laughs] And he was like, ‘We talk about it, and we write it all up on the board at the end of the day. It's on us to decide what to do and what not to do.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I thought it had to be like, consensus, to all agree on everything.’ And, really, that for me, the cool thing about this was you could take the novel, and you could be like, here's the entry and exit point, that would make for a great episode. And now we got to fill in all the gaps of that to get from here to here. And it was really exhilarating and super fun to do that.

Sadie: In terms of the music, because it is such a big component for this show and characters - working with someone like Blake Mills, and a slew of other notable artists that collaborated and contributed to the music, how much were you two in conversation with each other about the show and the music?

Scott: It was kind of a two-way street; we worked with him for such a long time before anything was going on because COVID happened and it sort of pressed pause on some things. And in a good way, it forwarded everybody to the time to do this. But Blake, we would say to him, ‘We're gonna need a song that does this. And all the songs in the show function the same way that they do in the novel. So, here's a song that Billy writes when he's most angry at Daisy. And it's like a diss track, and it's really ruthless. And then he makes her sing it and she knows she's singing about herself and all that stuff.’ And he'd be like, ‘OK, cool.’ And he would go off and write a song and then send it to us to fit that slot.

And then other times, it would be like, ‘Hey, guys, we just sort of were noodling around and we came up with this song, it's got that 70s vibe, what do you think?’ And we would listen to it and be like, ‘Oh my God, that's so amazing.’ And then we would change things to fit the song in the scene. So, it really kind of worked both ways. And it was such a fun, awesome process.

Blake is so talented and all the people he had co-writing with him, but really in the beginning when we were talking about the macro of it all and just making sure that he understood just how much work this was going to be, Blake's thing was ‘I want to write all the songs. I want to write the Simone disco songs. I want to write the band that opens for the Dunne brothers when they are playing small clubs and they sound like a psychedelic 60s band. I want to write every single thing.’ 

And then we talked about at the beginning, Daisy’s songs sound a certain way before she meets Billy, and then I want layman to be able to hear like, ‘Oh, that's there's a difference there. There's growth.’ And the Dunne brother’s music before he meets Daisy. And she kind of ups his game - I want to be able to sort of track the differences there in a way that wouldn't be that subtle, where you could hear just the growth and everything else. And he was like, ‘Great. Got it. I know exactly what to do.’ And that interplay was, I think, is the reason why everybody is responding so well to the songs.

Sadie: There are so many layers in the music aspect and how those subtle nuances play such a big part for those characters.

Scott: Yeah, it would be the kind of thing where we would finally get the "Look At Us Now/Honeycomb" song, we would be like, ‘Love it. This is gonna be great. Before we have this version, we have to have the unfinished crappy version.' [laughs] 'Can you go write that now?’ And he would be like, ‘Oh, OK, yes.’ And you have to retrofit the process so that it was authentic, and Blake cared so much about authenticity, he would always deliver exactly kind of what we needed so you can track the evolution.

Sadie: Taylor had written lyrics in the book, how much were you and Blake borrowing from those lyrics to write the episodes and the songs?

Scott: Yeah, most of the time, the scripts would say, ‘And then they play this song X. It does this for Daisy.’ The emotions are always there in the script, but the song itself was their department. And we didn't want to meddle with that side of the street too much.

And Taylor was like, ‘Please don't use my words. I want these professional songwriters to do their thing.’ Because they were already handcuffed quite a bit; it was like, it has to be this amazing 70s album, and this is a song that comes from this particular moment and point of view, and you can't use any instruments that might have existed after this time - just a lot of things they couldn't do. And to put on top of that, like, ‘Oh, and also here are all the lyrics,’ I don't think that would generate as much great stuff. And Taylor understood that.

In fact, the manuscript that I read, before it was finished, she didn't have the lyrics at the end of that. That was something I think that came about when they published the novel, which was genius. But by that point, we were kind of off to the races. And it seemed like she was very on board with not telling Jackson Browne to use her words. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] That would’ve been incredibly ballsy, but it’s Jackson Browne, he would’ve made it sound great either way. How did you and your writers’ room break down that timeline of the docu-style talking heads and narrative pieces and make sure it ebbs and flows for both major and minor characters?

Scott: It was a fun kind of process, you knew when you were reading it, when it was too many cuts away to present day or the 90s. When someone's perspective there would enhance the moment. And it was just like a push and pull a little bit about how frequently to go there. It should never feel intrusive, it should always kind of be a commentary on what we were seeing. And then when you watch it again, after you've seen the little twist at the end, it starts to make sense as to why they're potentially muting certain opinions or not saying the things that they would say to someone that wasn't as intimately connected to them. And that part of it, I thought was really cool. And again, that's in the book. So, it was one of those things we knew we were going to use. And then it was how do you work it to your advantage so that it's doing more for the story and not feeling like a crutch.

Sadie: Right, it could have gone either way. With your writing process or routine, where does music come into play for you when you're writing and how much does it influence your writing?

Scott: I probably have never written anything without listening to music. I do think it influences what you're doing. Sometimes it's probably not the best thing to do. But certainly, it's the kind of thing where I always prefer knowing in advance what song is going to sort of soundtrack a scene or give it a certain kind of energy.

This particular project is amazing in terms of how much music there is not just the original stuff, but also just the music that's happening in the scenes, and they all sort of serve an important purpose. But in terms of writing anything I do, I'll try to just wake up in the morning and pick up an album that I'm going to listen to and just see what happens.

Sadie: Yeah, let the music take you away. What led you down the path to becoming a filmmaker? And do you think you'll ever find a project in the future that you'll get to do the full music curation yourself?

Scott: I would certainly love to! I always wanted to write, and I never really thought that I had the ability to do it. And I went into development, and I worked for a movie company in New York when I graduated college. And my job there was really reading a lot of scripts, doing notes, coverage, all of that kind of stuff. And then you realize that the bar is a lot lower than you thought it was. When I tried to write like my writing heroes - failure. Horrible. [laughs] But when you stop doing that, and you think about kind of just trying to write the best thing you can on that particular day, it's probably going to be better than a lot of things. You just have to do it. No more excuses and just try.

And so, my friend was working as Robert De Niro's assistant, and I was his development person, we would go up to the roof of the building, and we would just try to write a script ourselves. And then when we finally finished one, which was the biggest challenge for me that I had never done before, it was just so much more gratifying that we were like, ‘Let's just keep doing this. This is so fun.’ And that was man, that was 20-plus years ago now. But that's how it started.

Sadie: Yeah, you just have to try. That’s the hardest thing, right?

Scott: It's not as bad as you think it is. [laughs] I always joke that my little finger is a little crooked, because it's always on the delete button. I want to delete every single thing that I do. [laughs] But the more you sort of do it and realize that the mountain isn't as high as you think it is, the more I think you'll develop a little bit of confidence.

Sadie: Are there certain stories or maybe even thematic elements that you want to explore in your writing?

Scott: No matter what, I feel like I'm always just trying to rewrite The Graduate. [laughs] I didn't know that, but it all ends up being that. They're all coming-of-age stories, even romantic, they're just all somebody is realizing that they have a lot of growth and work to do themselves. [laughs] That's what the throughline has been of everything I've ever done. And yeah, I think I keep gravitating toward those stories until I do one that I feel like I can't do better.

Sadie: Any advice for those adapting a book or IP that is time period specific, similar to Daisy Jones?

Scott: I think I learned a lot of things. I didn't know anything when I first started this process, especially about television. But in terms of adapting period sort of stuff, I think Taylor did the same thing I did, we just read everything we could get our hands on about the subject matter, watched all the documentaries, and just sort of did a lot of research.

And it helps when you're passionate about the thing you're researching, because it doesn't feel like research. It's fun. And it's just so exciting, and you learn new things and become kind of a mini expert on a subject. And then can kind of talk with a slight authority about it like, ‘No, this is what happened.’ And I always love to come from a place of what would really happen, and so research helps because you have so many stories of the way things went down, that you can kind of spin off.

And I think with Daisy Jones & the Six, a lot of people talk about the Fleetwood Mac influence, but it really only goes up to a point, because you have a lot of the Laurel Canyon scene in there, you have a lot of Bruce Springsteen in there, you've got some CCR in there, you've got some Eagles, you've got Joni Mitchell and just a lot of different things that she pulled from, and that creates the kind of stew that you can run with. And the more you have, the more I think you can make your own. And so that process I thought was amazing. And from now on, if ever I do anything that's not a true story, but feels like it should be or could be, start with just becoming an expert on that thing. And then make it your own.

Sadie: I feel like you can go down the darkest longest rabbit hole for any of this kind of research. When do you know, ‘OK, enough is enough. It's time to just start writing’?

Scott: Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know that there's ever a moment. It becomes more about you get an idea from the stew. And you're so excited to kind of start fictionalizing the stuff that you've come across that you put it aside and then you might hit a roadblock and you might say, ‘Oh man, what would happen? I've got this moment and I haven't seen this before and I'm not sure what would have happened’ and then maybe you go back to the research, and you fill the stew with more ingredients and then go from there.

You're right, there will always be more that you can read and more that you can watch. But it does feel like your brain will tell you when it's time to kind of get creative. It's like left versus right side of the brain. And when you're using one too much, the other one's like, ‘Let me in!’ And maybe that's what happens. But I've never really thought about it before. So, it's a really good question.

Sadie: It’s hard to stop, right? I would just assume maybe your wife is like, ‘Hey, we have a production schedule to stick to, start writing.’

Scott: [laughs] Deadlines are helpful. Yes, that's true. A deadline is definitely helpful. We ended up adapting this on spec and didn't really have any of those kinds of guardrails. But it was one of those things where like, just wanting to get it right and wanting to kind of make sure you didn't second guess things later on. So, don't show it to anybody until you feel like, ‘Nope, that's exactly what it should be.’ And plus, I just loved watching all the documentaries and reading all things. 

Daisy Jones & the Six is now streaming on Amazon Prime.