Sam Claflin On Becoming Billy Dunne For ‘Daisy Jones & The Six,’ Diving Deep Into Fleetwood Mac’s History & Gravitating To Projects That Feel “Closer To Home”
24.06.2023 - 21:39
/ deadline.com
Sam Claflin learned about the history of Fleetwood Mac from a TikTok video.
He’d grown up listening to Rumours and, although that album is heavily infused with the lust and pain that accompanied the band’s infamous affairs, he had never looked beyond the music. The actor had already been cast as frontman Billy Dunne in Daisy Jones and the Six when he began his deep dive.
In fact, his fascination began when he was introduced to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s 1997 performance of “Silver Springs” — which, funnily enough, would go viral on TikTok after the release of Daisy Jones.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, the chemistry, that connection, the history,'” he remembered in a recent conversation with Deadline. “And I remember being the one to show Riley [Keough] that on almost like day one, saying ‘Have you seen this video? How Billy-Daisy is this?'”
Claflin has joked many times that he wasn’t very musically inclined before he signed on to the series adaptation for Daisy Jones and the Six. He performed Elton John’s “Your Song” for his audition and was asked to stop before he could reach the end. He also thought that “Come Together” by the Beatles was a Michael Jackson song. Still, something about him made the producers think he’d be right for the role.
But in order to become a believable frontman, Claflin would have to put in quite a bit of work.
“Honestly, that first week, I was very stressed and very worried. I mean, terrified honestly, about the prospect of doing this well, because I didn’t see myself progressing that quickly…” he said, explaining that he’d originally been tasked with transforming into a rockstar in just five weeks.
Within about a week of Claflin landing in LA for rehearsals, productions were shut