‘Daisy Jones & the Six’: All the Biggest Changes From Book to Series

Many of the weeds, including discussions of Daisy’s billing with the Six, have been removed in the TV adaptation. In the book, she officially joins the Six after performing an acoustic set of her songs with Eddie before a live audience, including a Rolling Stone reporter. That journalist, Jonah Berg, will later write a cover story with the headline, “The Six That Should Be Seven,” and insist that she “belonged in the band” (more on that storyline in episode six). But the series has Daisy’s admittance into the band sealed with Camila’s permission, telling her at a party that the band is “a family—we’ll take care of you if you take care of us.”

Track 5: Fire

How Karen and Graham Get Together

In the show’s fourth episode, Graham makes the secret crush he’s long been harboring for Karen known by kissing her at a party. While she initially laughs off his advance, in the fifth episode Karen grows jealous of Graham’s romance with a Barry Manilow-loving woman named Caroline (Olivia Rose Keegan) and is awakened to her true feelings for him. Karen makes the first move in the novel, asking Graham on the phone one night: “How come you’ve never made a move on me?” He says, “I don’t take shots I know I’ll miss.” She replies, “I don’t think you’ll miss, Dunne.” 

Track 6: Whatever Gets You Thru the Night

The Role of That Rolling Stone Reporter

The book version of Rolling Stone’s Jonah Berg (played in the series by Nick Pupo) takes an interest in covering the band much earlier, writing an article that plays a key part in making Daisy and the Six one musical entity. In the series, Jonah is called in to write a puff piece about the group by producer Teddy Wright. The focus of his piece, however, becomes simmering tensions within the band and between Daisy and Billy. Eventually, Billy spills details about Daisy’s addiction to avoid the publication revealing how his own rehab stint prevented him from being present at his first daughter’s birth, a story Daisy tells the reporter herself. Similar events take place in the book, but occur much later in a second Berg piece tied to Aurora’s release.

The Songs, They Are A-Changin’

Much of the sixth episode is devoted to the creation of Aurora, Daisy Jones and the Six’s album. With the exception of “Please,” most of the fictional songs proposed for Aurora in the book have been scrapped or significantly altered.  “Impossible Woman,” Billy’s impassioned plea to Daisy about her sobriety, becomes “More Fun to Miss;” “The Canyon,” Graham’s lost ode to Karen, doesn’t factor into the series. The lyrics to “Regret Me” are also different, although the song remains. 

Mick Riva Is Missing

There is a Taylor Jenkins Reid universe, wherein the author includes nods to fictional characters from her previous novels in each new work. In Daisy, Mick Riva, a fictional singer first introduced in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, attends Daisy’s wild party at Chateau Marmont, which she throws instead of attending the Six’s recording session. Shortly after Mick shows up, an extremely intoxicated Daisy takes a dip in the pool with all of her clothes on and later cuts her bare foot on glass. This scene is recreated in the series, but Mick is nowhere to be seen. 

Billy and Daisy’s First Kiss

A major point of contention—and inspiration for Daisy’s scorched-earth song “Regret Me”—is a kiss (or lack thereof) with Billy. In the book, the pair’s lips barely graze during a songwriting session before Billy shuts Daisy down. The series has them actually pull the trigger and passionately kiss during a contentious recording session for “More Fun to Miss,” Billy’s blistering song about Daisy. In fact, everything about the increasingly charged Daisy-Billy-Camila love triangle is far more pronounced on screen than in the book. Billy says in the novel that “there was this unspoken thing between Camila and I,” adding, “in some marriages you don’t need to say everything that you feel.” But Camila more pointedly tells Billy at episode’s end: “If you love her, if you ever do, that is when this ends.”

Camila and Eddie

However subtle, there is reference to potential infidelity on Camila’s part in the book, when she has a long lunch with her high school prom date. “She was gone four hours,” Billy recalls in the novel. “No one eats lunch for four hours.” But in the show, it’s bass player Eddie with whom Camila shares a few stolen moments. “There’s a moment where Camila talks about going out and seeing an old friend. And you don’t know exactly what that means because the book is told in the style of an oral history, you don’t ever know exactly what happened,” showrunner Will Graham told Vanity Fair. “So in the show we had to find answers to those things that felt satisfying and real, but also hopefully are surprises and fun for the fans.”

Track 7: She’s Gone

imone’s Queer Identity

As already established, Simone plays a much larger role in the series than the book. This includes examination of her sexuality in episode 7, which shows Simone’s musical career taking off in New York City clubs—and the ways her romance with Bernice could complicate her career. “In the first conversation I had with Taylor, I said, ‘What would you want to see more of in the show that you didn’t get to do in the book?’ And she said more of Simone,” Graham, who directed episode 7, told Vanity Fair. At the end of the episode, Daisy even uses Simone’s identity against her in a particularly heated moment, asking, “Are you in love with me? Is that what this is?”

Daisy’s Marriage