Daisy Jones And The Six: Sam Claflin and Camila Morrone speak to Sky News’ Backstage podcast about new adaptation

Published

2 years ago

March 4, 2023

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While many people have unfulfilled dreams of being a rock star, the cast of the new TV adaptation of Daisy Jones And The Six were required to pull off being a world famous band in order to make the show.

It’s based on the best-selling novel from 2019 – which is itself thought to be inspired by the band Fleetwood Mac – and is about the trajectory of a group who become mega stars, and the romantic relationships of its members.

The bulk of the story happens in the 1970s, so it’s a period piece, but we also see the bandmates looking back on their rise to fame in a documentary set in the 1990s. Riley Keough plays the titular Daisy Jones, while Sam Claflin, Camila Morrone, Suki Waterhouse and Nabiyah Be are also among the stars.

For Hunger Games star Claflin, who plays one of the group’s lead singers Billy Dunne, it was the opportunity to play a father that was the most enjoyable aspect of filming.

“I genuinely loved being a dad,” he told Sky News’ Backstage podcast. “As an actual real-life dad it was nice to bring my experience into filmmaking for the first time.

“It was really, for me, refreshing playing a character who went through similar struggles that I’ve been through being a dad and trying to be an artist at the same time. So it was a real joy for me to experience the drama that surrounds his life, I suppose.”

Claflin says wanting to bring his own experiences to his performances is something relatively new for him.

“I think I spent the majority of my early years in my career desperately trying to get away from myself and trying to prove to people that I can do this and I can wear this hat and I can, you know, I can be angry and I can be sad. But I think as I’m getting older, I’m like, no, actually I really want to use my own experiences and be very authentic with my performance, and kind of tap into things that are relatable to me.”

During the series, viewers see how Daisy Jones meets The Six and their subsequent rise to stardom. As well as the intertwined relationships, it also explores fame and its trappings.

Claflin says being a celebrity in the 1970s was very different to being a star today.

“You’re seen everywhere – everything you say is immediately broadcast and tweeted and tik-toked and becomes a meme and a gif,” he said. “Or a jif – is it a gif or a jif?”

He continued: “I think it’s impossible to do anything without being seen now, I think there’s definitely with that positives, but there’s obviously huge negatives.

“I only speak for myself and I don’t know that I live out in the public eye enough to really warrant much interest in my private life, but I feel like I’m very fortunate that I get to live my life, my private life, very privately – I have my kids and live my life with my family and no one really knows what we look like.”

Morrone plays Billy Dunne’s wife, also called Camila. The actress was previously in a relationship with Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio, but says like Claflin she manages to avoid too much scrutiny.

“There was definitely a mystery around ’70s fame, I think today with social media and paparazzi there’s an accessibility around fame,” she said.

“I think it is kind of cool to have lived before the era of iPhones, where everything now that you do can be recorded, photographed – there was much more freedom back then to have conversations and be open and play around with ideas and thoughts and to party and, you know, kind of let loose.

“And now there’s always this tension of knowing that there’s this element that’s out of your control, so I can imagine that that would have been a really different experience to fame and beautiful in its own way – but yeah, I also, like Sam, live a very normal life, I wouldn’t say that it’s all encompassing in my life.”

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Morrone’s character isn’t in the band the show is named after, but is an integral part of the story. She says the thing she loved most about making the programme was the aesthetics.

“I’ve never gotten to play a character where costume was important, and for me this costume was very important because it kind of helped the way that I moved – I was barefoot a lot, and it kind of made me feel like Laurel Canyon, Earth-Mom, hippie,” she said.

“It was also fun to create that journey, where she starts off in Pittsburgh as a young teenage conservative girl who lives with her parents, and then she becomes the wife of the biggest rock star in the world; becoming a woman and discovering her sensuality, sexuality… she goes from like 17, 18, 19 to her late twenties and becomes the young woman that she’s going to be.”

Daisy Jones And The Six is streaming on Prime Video. Hear our review in the latest episode of Backstage – the film and TV podcast from Sky News

Entertainment

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played The Cosby Show’s Theo, drowns in Costa Rica

Published

12 hours ago

July 21, 2025

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Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played The Cosby Show's Theo, drowns in Costa Rica

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played The Cosby Show character Theo, has drowned in Costa Rica, according to authorities.

The country’s Judicial Investigation Department said the 54-year-old actor drowned on Sunday afternoon off a beach on the Caribbean coast.

It is understood he was swimming at Playa Grande de Cocles in Limon province when he was pulled underwater by a current.

“He was rescued by people on the beach,” according to the department’s early report, but emergency workers from Costa Rica’s Red Cross found him without any signs of life and he was taken to the morgue.

Warner was on holiday with his family at the time, according to US celebrity news site People.

The Cosby Show aired from 1984 to 1992 on NBC in the US and is regarded as a groundbreaking show for its portrayal of a successful black middle-class family. It was also shown on Channel 4 in the UK at around the same time.

Its star, Bill Cosby, played a doctor named Cliff Huxtable, with Warner in the role of Theo, his only son.

The NBC sitcom was the most popular show in America for much of its run between 1984 and 1992.

Warner played the role for eight seasons in all 197 episodes, winning an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy in 1986.

For many, the lasting image of the character, and of Warner, is of him wearing a badly-botched mock designer shirt sewn by his sister Denise, played by Lisa Bonet.

Warner ‘proud’ of show despite Cosby claims

The legacy of The Cosby Show has been tarnished after Cosby was jailed in 2018 following a conviction for sexual assault.

He was released in 2021 after his conviction was overturned.

Dozens of women had accused Cosby of sexual assault or rape before the trial.

Following his release from prison, Cosby was found liable for sexually assaulting a woman at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was a teenager.

Warner told the Associated Press in 2015: “My biggest concern is when it comes to images of people of colour on television and film… We’ve always had ‘The Cosby Show’ to hold up against that. And the fact that we no longer have that, that’s the thing that saddens me the most because in a few generations the Huxtables will have been just a fairy tale.”

In 2023, Warner told People in an interview: “I know I can speak for all the cast when I say The Cosby Show is something that we are all still very proud of.”

Read more entertainment news:
Danny Dyer on Mr Big Stuff
Scuffle breaks out on Royal Opera House on stage

Warner wins a Grammy

Following his career on The Cosby Show, Warner later appeared on the sitcom Malcolm & Eddie, co-starring with comedian Eddie Griffin in the series on the UPN network from 1996 to 2000.

In the 2010s he starred opposite Tracee Ellis Ross as a family-blending couple for two seasons on the BET sitcom Read Between The Lines.

He also had a role as OJ Simpson’s friend Al Cowlings in American Crime Story and was a series regular on Fox’s The Resident.

Films he has appeared in include the 2008 rom-com Fool’s Gold with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson.

A poet and a musician, Warner won a Grammy for best traditional R&B performance for the song Jesus Children with Robert Glasper and Lalah Hathaway. He was also nominated for best spoken word poetry album for Hiding In Plain View.

Warner was married with a daughter, but chose to not publicly disclose their names.

Entertainment

Danny Dyer on Mr Bigstuff, Oasis, and his surprising screensaver

Published

18 hours ago

July 21, 2025

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Danny Dyer on Mr Bigstuff, Oasis, and his surprising screensaver

From Human Traffic and The Business to his critically acclaimed performance in the raunchy TV adaptation of Rivals, via a stint as Queen Vic landlord Mick Carter in EastEnders, Danny Dyer has been on our screens for more than 30 years.

But it was his performance in the TV comedy Mr Bigstuff that earned him his first BAFTA win – and one of the ceremony’s biggest cheers from the audience – earlier this year.

Now, he returns to his prize-winning role for the second series of the Sky show, which tells the story of two estranged brothers – Glen (played by creator Ryan Sampson), an anxious carpet salesman living his ideal suburban life with fiancee Kirsty (Harriet Webb), and Lee (played by Dyer), an alpha male who struts back into his brother’s life carrying their father’s ashes.

Several EastEnders alumni feature, including Nitin Ganatra, Victoria Alcock and Linda Henry, who played Dyer’s on-screen mother, Shirley Carter.

Reflecting on some of Albert Square’s most famous characters and who would work well in Mr Bigstuff, Dyer says he would have loved to see the late June Brown, who played the chain-smoking hypochondriac Dot Cotton for 35 years, taking on a role.

“Absolute legend,” he says.

Sampson suggests the late Dame Barbara Windsor, who played the formidable Queen Vic landlady Peggy Mitchell, but has a clear pitch if season three gets the green light.

“It could still be a possible, it would be amazing,” he says. “You want your Pat Butcher, don’t you? You want Pam St Clement. Why hasn’t she played a mafia boss yet? She’d be amazing. She’d be incredible at it.”

Dyer reveals his screensaver

After his long career on screen, Dyer is now enjoying playing a variety of roles alongside the Cockney geezer types that became his bread and butter in the early noughties.

His nuanced performance as awkward entrepreneur Freddie Jones in Rivals brought him praise from fans and critics alike, and Mr Bigstuff his BAFTA.

But Dyer always had range. After small TV roles in shows including The Bill and A Touch Of Frost, he grew close to the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter in 2000 after auditioning and earning the role of a waiter in his play Celebration at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, north London.

“I’ve got Harold Pinter as a screensaver on my phone,” he says. “I always feel that he’s sort of looking down on me or close to me, so I like to just feel that he’s around me.”

Dyer continued the role in Celebration both in the West End and on Broadway, with Pinter becoming his mentor in the process.

In 2020, he presented a Sky Arts documentary, Danny Dyer On Pinter, which explored the life, career and impact of the playwright and screenwriter, who died in 2008.

He also has plans to develop a stage tribute to his friend, currently titled When Harry Met Danny.

Reflecting on his entry into the industry, he says theatre was quite inaccessible at the time, but Pinter opened it up to him.

“I think it’s even worse now, which I feel is a sad state of affairs,” he says. “I don’t know why that is. Everything’s become quite elite. All the elite f****** looking after themselves, so that needs to change.”

‘Love in the air’ at Oasis gig

But Pinter isn’t his only big influence – Dyer was one of the thousands of fans to see Oasis make their return to the stage in Cardiff earlier this month.

“It was really emotional seeing them come out,” he says. “There was a lot of love in the air, a lot of good energy.

“You know, there’s a lot of f****** shit going on. I think people, of my age as well, just want to jump around and sing them songs at the top of their lungs. So I’m still recovering, I’m not going to lie.”

Mr Bigstuff returns for season two on Thursday, on Sky Max and NOW

Entertainment

Scuffle breaks out on stage of Royal Opera House after performer unfurls Palestinian flag

Published

18 hours ago

July 21, 2025

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Scuffle breaks out on stage of Royal Opera House after performer unfurls Palestinian flag

A brief scuffle broke out at London’s Royal Opera House after a performer unfurled a Palestinian flag during a show.

The incident took place during a performance of Il Trovatore on Saturday.

During the final night of the 11-night run of the show, a performer held up the flag on stage.

In video footage, shared online, someone backstage could be seen attempting to take it off the performer. The performer grabs it back following a brief scuffle.

A spokesperson for the Royal Ballet and Opera said: “The display of the flag was an unauthorised action by the artist.

“It was not approved by the Royal Ballet and Opera and is a wholly inappropriate act.”

The reaction to the flag was mixed, with some people heard applauding and cheering, while another audience member was heard saying “oh my God”.

One poster on X, who claimed to have been a member of the audience, said: “Extraordinary scenes at the Royal Opera House tonight.

“During the curtain call for Il Trovatore one of the background artists came on stage waving a Palestine flag. Just stood there, no bowing or shouting. Someone off stage kept trying to take it off him. Incredible.”

Performers show support for Palestinians

A number of performers have shown support for Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

During Glastonbury Festival, numerous acts offered messages of support during their sets, including Kneecap, Bob Vylan, Wolf Alice, and Amyl And The Sniffers.

During her band’s set, Wolf Alice singer Ellie Rowsell told the crowd at the Other Stage: “Whilst we have the stage for just a little bit longer, we want to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine.

“No-one should ever be afraid to do that.”

Following their performances, both Kneecap and Bob Vylan faced investigation by Avon and Somerset Police.

Bob Vylan were widely criticised after leading on-stage chants of “death to the IDF” (Israel Defence Forces).

The performance was live-streamed by the BBC, sparking a backlash against the broadcaster – which later issued an apology.

The investigation into Kneecap was later dropped, with the police saying there was insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any offence”.