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.
Pic: Lacey Terrell/Prime Video/Amazon Studios
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.
Suki Waterhouse and Nabiyah Be (below) also star. Pics: Pamela Littky/Prime Video/Amazon Studios
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.”
L-R: Camila Morrone as Camila Dunne, Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne, and Riley Keough as Daisy Jones in Daisy Jones And The Six. Pic: Pamela Littky/Prime Video/Amazon Studios
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
The Magic Circle’s first female member fooled them into believing she was a man – how did she do it?
How did one woman fool the most famous magic society on the planet?
Back in 1991, Sophie Lloyd pulled off the ultimate illusion, tricking the Magic Circle into thinking she was a man.
But over 30 years after being unceremoniously kicked out, the Circle has tracked down the former actress to apologise and reinstate her membership.
She told Sky News how returning feels like the society has “made good on something that was wrong”.
Sophie Lloyd, who tricked the Magic Circle into believing she was a man
How did she infiltrate that exclusive group that nowadays counts the likes of David Copperfield and Dynamo as members?
In March of that year, she took her entry exam posing as a teenage boy, creating an alter-ego called Raymond Lloyd.
“I’d played a boy before,” she explained, but “it took months of preparation” to secretly infiltrate the Circle’s ranks half a year before it would officially vote to let women in.
“Really, going back 30 years, men’s clubs were like, you know, just something you accepted.”
The men-only rule had been in place since the Circle was formed in 1905. The thinking behind it being that women just couldn’t keep secrets.
Aware of the frustration of female magicians at the time, Lloyd felt she was up for the challenge of proving women could be as good at magic as the men.
The idea was, in fact, born out of a double act, thought up by a successful magician called Jenny Winstanley who’d wanted to join herself but wasn’t allowed.
She recognised the hoax would probably only work with a much younger woman posing as a teenage boy, and met Lloyd through an acting class.
Sophie Lloyd as teenage magician Raymond Lloyd. Pic: Sophie Lloyd
Lloyd said: “We had to have a wig made… the main thing was my face, I had plumpers made on a brace to bring his jawline down.”
To hide her feminine hands, she did the magic in gloves, which she says “was so hard to do, especially sleight of hand.”
The biggest test came when she was invited for a drink with her examiner, where she had to fake having laryngitis.
“After the exam, which was 20 minutes, he invited Jenny and I – she played my manager – and I sat there for one hour and three quarters and had to say ‘sorry, I’ve got a bad voice’.”
Raymond Lloyd passed the test, and his membership certificate was sent through to Sophie.
Then, in October of the same year, when whispers started circulating that the society was going to open its membership to both sexes, she and Jenny decided to reveal all. It didn’t go down well.
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Rather than praise her performance, members were incandescent about the deception and, somewhat ironically, Raymond Lloyd was kicked out just before women members were let in.
Lloyd said: “We got a letter… Jenny was hurt… she was snubbed by people she actually knew, that was hurtful. However, things have really changed now…”
Three decades later the Magic Circle put out a nationwide appeal stating they wanted to apologise and Lloyd was recently tracked down in Spain.
While Jenny Winstanley died 20 years ago in a car crash, as well as Sophie receiving her certificate on Thursday, her mentor’s contribution to magic is being recognised at the special show that’s being held in both their honour at the Magic Circle.
Lloyd says: “Jenny was a wonderful, passionate person. She would have loved to be here. It’s for her really.”
Entertainment
Harvey Weinstein retrial: ‘He had all the power,’ prosecutor tells court as opening statements begin
The retrial of Harvey Weinstein has begun in New York – with a prosecutor telling the court the former Hollywood mogul used “dream opportunities as weapons” to prey on the three women accusing him of sexual abuse.
The case is being retried five years after the landmark #MeToo case against the producer, who was once one of the industry’s most powerful figures, after the appeals court last year overturned his conviction.
Weinstein, who is now 73, is charged with raping one woman and forcing oral sex on two others. He has strenuously denied the allegations.
Following a lengthy jury selection process due to the high-profile nature of the retrial, the prosecution has now opened its case at the same courthouse in Manhattan.
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Why is Weinstein getting a retrial?
Attorney Shannon Lucey told the court the Oscar-winning producer and studio boss used “dream opportunities as weapons” against the female accusers.
“The defendant wanted their bodies, and the more they resisted, the more forceful he got,” she said.
Weinstein had “enormous control over those working in TV and film because he decided who was in and who was out,” the court heard. “He had all the power. They had none.”
Dressed in a dark suit and navy tie, Weinstein listened to the prosecution’s statement after arriving in court in a wheelchair, as he has done for his recent appearances.
His lawyers are expected to outline their case later on Wednesday.
Steven Hirsch/ New York Post via AP/ pool
The opening statements got under way after the last jurors were finally picked on Tuesday, more than a week after the selection process began.
Prospective jurors were questioned about their backgrounds, life experiences and various other points that could potentially impact their ability to be fair and impartial about a case that has been so highly publicised. They have also been asked privately about their knowledge of the case and opinions on Weinstein.
Seven men and five women have been chosen to hear the trial.
Why is there a retrial?
In 2020, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being found guilty of charges of sexual assault in 2006 and rape in 2013, relating to two women.
But in April 2024, New York’s highest court overturned the convictions due to concerns of prejudicial testimony and that the judge in the original trial had made improper rulings.
Prosecutors announced a retrial last year and a separate charge concerning a third woman, who was not part of the original trial, has since been added to the case. She alleges the producer forced oral sex on her at a hotel in 2006.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies raping or sexually assaulting anyone.
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At a preliminary court hearing in January, he begged for the retrial to be held as quickly as possible due to his deteriorating health, telling the judge: “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
Weinstein was also sentenced in February 2023 after being convicted of rape during a separate trial in LA – which means that even if the retrial ends in not guilty verdicts on all three counts, he will remain behind bars.
His lawyers are also appealing this sentence.
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