Riley Keough and Sam Claflin on the "Emotionally Draining" Daisy Jones & the Six Finale
Spoilers ahead for the finale of Daisy Jones & the Six.
The tenth and last episode of Daisy Jones & the Six tells the story of the band's last ever show at Chicago's Soldier Field. The episode, of which the flashback scenes almost exclusively follow the final concert, ends in the present day, with Billy (Sam Claflin) reuniting with Daisy (Riley Keough).
The ending, both Claflin and Keough say, was emotionally draining. It wasn't just the closing performance of Daisy Jones & the Six, the fictional band, but the last time the actors performed together. Ahead of the finale, Riley Keough and Sam Claflin spoke to Town & Country about filming that Chicago show, whether or not they think Daisy and Billy end up together, and what has stuck with them since they finished filming.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
Talk to me about your emotions preparing Daisy Jones & the Six's final concert.
Riley Keough: The concert and the shows in the last three episodes we shot back-to-back over two weeks of night shoots. So we were doing all of our performance stuff for that episode and the other episodes in the same two weeks, which was separate from everything else.
But those weeks were very intense and so it was having to jump around from episode eight to ten, in terms of performances and where we were emotionally, multiple times in the night. And we were doing it from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m.! So it was definitely challenging.
Sam Claflin: And very taxing.
RK: A lot of the scenes were also part of the music sequences for [episode] ten. We're on stage a lot.
SC: That's the thing: There's so much that happens on stage emotionally, physically, and then kinda having to remember, oh yeah, I've had a drink, how many drinks have I had now? How much blow have I done?
RK: Having to track your sobriety.
SC: It was very difficult, especially for me, because I hadn't had to do that through the whole series, pretty much since episode two.
It was really emotionally draining, honestly. Especially the finale of that concert, which is when Daisy is giving a speech, and I'm looking on and I started tearing up. I'll never forget as she started singing and I had to run off stage, I would then be sobbing backstage. But I think it was partly to do with what my character is going through, but equally watching my band friends singing a song that I should be singing, and knowing that this was probably the last time we'll be playing together for a long while—it was quite impactful.
RK: It was our band's last performance as Daisy Jones, but it was also our last performance as actors and friends, so it was doubly emotional. There was definitely a lot of scenes where I wasn't supposed to be crying that I was emotional. The last "Look At Us Now" moment was really sad, but it was empowering.
SC: But I suppose, in answer to your question, how did we prepare for it? I think we did two years of preparation—it was all leading up to that moment.
For those final scenes, when you're filming out of chronological order, are you reminding yourself 'okay, this is happening now'?
RK: We've lived with it for so long, like we knew that show backwards and forwards and like every moment we were familiar with.
SC: Billy has a line in the voice over towards the end, that he shares with Daisy, where he says, "Everything that made Daisy burn, makes me burn," and that is how I feel about Billy. It's this weird—where I was in my own personal life, in many ways, and things that I have lived through, conversations I've had, Billy is having in this series. For me, the emotions were just very, very raw, but so easily accessible.
In all honesty as an actor, I'd always used a tear stick to help get me to a point where I needed to cry. There was very little, if any, used for me on on this project. It's just how authentic it felt, and how connected I felt to the character. I was a mess!
RK: You were!
SC: I was a mess for most of this shooting.
Have Daisy and Billy lingered with you both since you wrapped on production?
RK: Always, for me, there's certain things that I take away with me that just stay with me forever when playing a character. Definitely this was a really long one for us. This was years. There's probably things I'm unaware of that I have taken with me. But there's nothing on the top of my head I can think of—my hair is red!
SC: I dropped the American accent quite quickly. I cut off the hair quite quickly, too, because that was a lot to contend with.
RK: That was a lot of locks!
SC: There was a lot of locks. I posted something on Instagram immediately after wrapping, I said this job has been like my therapy and I'd never been in therapy in my life. After shooting this, it just sort of made me go, 'Maybe I need to do some therapy.' I felt a little broken, in the way that Billy always talks about 'We're broken, we're broken.' I think my conclusion at the end of filming was the same that Billy has, which is I needed to fix myself. I thought I was fixed, and actually I'm a long way from that. I definitely carried that aspect of him and the fact that I've realized that every day I'm getting a bit better, but you know, there's still a long way to go.
RK: That's so beautiful, thank you for sharing.
SC: You're welcome.
The final scene of the show, you see Billy knock on Daisy's door—it's this hopeful note, but you don't really know what's going to happen between them. Do you two have your own visions of what's next for Daisy and Billy?
RK: Well, we'll have to find out on season two! I'm kidding, I'm joking, there's no season two. We keep pitching it to Amazon via interviews.
I don't know, I think that's a moment. I would love to keep open for interpretation and have the audience have their own version of what that might look like, personally.
SC: Yeah, same. I definitely played something—my idea of what happened, but what people take away from that is open to interpretation. Similarly, I like to keep it open ended in a way that people can make up their own mind. It definitely seems hopeful, I would say.
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