Is Daisy Jones and The Six a true story?

Riley Keough in a black vest top as Daisy Jones in Daisy Jones and The Six
Free-spirited singer Daisy Jones (Riley Keough). (Image credit: Lacey Terrell/Prime Video)

Is Daisy Jones and The Six a true story? That's one of the big questions surrounding the new Prime Video series.

Daisy Jones and The Six transports us back in time to the rock and roll era. In the 1970s, we're introduced to two musical acts who are about to be catapulted to superstardom; singer-songwriter Daisy Jones, and a five-piece band from Pittsburgh fronted by Billy Dunne called The Six. 

The two musical acts are thrown together by a record producer to form the titular supergroup that ends up crafting a hit record and heading off on a hugely successful tour. However, the band shockingly split up after a sold-out show in Chicago in 1977, and never revealed what went wrong. Daisy Jones and The Six sees the members finally spilling the beans, decades after they went their separate ways.

With so much drama at the show's core, some viewers are wondering whether the series is actually a true story. Read on to find out what you need to know.

Is Daisy Jones and The Six a true story? 

Cast of Daisy Jones and The Six

The Six. (Image credit: Prime Video)

Daisy Jones and The Six is not a true story. Though the show partly takes the form of interview-style sections with the bandmates in the present and is styled as a revelatory, tell-all look back at the band's history, it is not a true story. 

The events of the Prime Video series are actually drawn from the 2020 best-selling novel of the same name by the popular author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, the writer behind The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto is Back.

The band does exist, in a sense, as a version of the album they produce in the show, "Aurora" has actually been produced which you can listen to on streaming platforms right now.

That said, the story of Daisy Jones and The Six does bear a striking resemblance to the drama surrounding a very real band from the 1970s: Fleetwood Mac.

Is Daisy Jones and The Six based on Fleetwood Mac?

Daisy Jones and The Six cast assembled on stage during one of their performances

Daisy Jones and The Six on-stage during one of their live performances. (Image credit: Lacey Terrell/Prime Video)

Taylor Jenkins Reid has made it clear that Daisy Jones and The Six is inspired by the dynamic that sprang up between two Fleetwood Mac vocalists, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. 

The duo became part of Fleetwood Mac in 1975 after Lindsey Buckingham was asked to join the band. He came on board on the condition that his then-girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, could also come on board. 

In 1977—ahead of the release of the band's landmark album, Rumours—Nicks and Buckingham called things quits, and it's thought that some of the songs on Rumors were inspired by the duo's changing dynamic. 

In a 2019 blog post for Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine entitled "How Fleetwood Mac influenced Daisy Jones & The Six', Reid explains how she was fascinated by a Fleetwood Mac reunion show called The Dance.

Reid wrote: "When I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing “Landslide.” How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them. I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh.

"Even after copious amounts of research about Fleetwood Mac and a host of other duos and bands, I’m still taken with that moment between them. I can’t help but marvel at the idea that, despite everything they’d been through, Stevie and Lindsey still loved each other then. Or how, despite what it looked like to us all, they no longer did."

Daisy Jones and The Six is now airing on Prime Video. 

Martin Shore
Staff Writer at WhatToWatch.com

Martin was a Staff Writer with WhatToWatch.com, where he produced a variety of articles focused on the latest and greatest films and TV shows. Now he works for our sister site Tom's Guide in the same role.

Some of his favorite shows are What We Do In The Shadows, Bridgerton, Gangs of London, The Witcher, Doctor Who, and Ghosts. When he’s not watching TV or at the movies, Martin’s probably still in front of a screen playing the latest video games, reading, or watching the NFL.