‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ executive producer Lauren Neustadter on the show’s Emmy nominations: ‘An absolute dream come true’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
When executive producer Lauren Neudstadter heard “Daisy Jones and the Six” had received a 2023 Emmy nomination for Best Limited Series – one of nine the Amazon Prime Video series scored last month – she says it was an “unbelievable moment.”
“I feel like it’s the song ‘Look at Us Now,’” Neustadter tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview, referencing one of the show’s fictional band’s biggest hits. “When you talk about dreams come true – to get to share that with my husband, it was an absolute dream come true.”
Neustadter, who serves as film and television president for production company Hello Sunshine is married to “Daisy Jones” co-creator and Oscar nominee Scott Neudstadter. It was Scott who first read the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel on which “Daisy Jones and the Six” is based and told his wife about the project. Lauren quickly devoured the book too, she remembers – although she cops to Scott being a faster reader – and urged her boss, Hello Sunshine founder Reese Witherspoon, to read the manuscript as well. Lauren had been at Hello Sunshine for only two months at that point, but it became clear “Daisy Jones” would soon become a top priority.
“Reese was like, ‘I’m obsessed with this book, what do we have to do?’ Lauren recalls. “So the three of us wound up getting on the phone, really talking about what is the best way to honor this book and bring this book to life. It was so clear to all of us that [television as opposed to a feature film] was the best way to do it. And so that was the moment that we sort of went after it with our whole hearts. And we were so lucky to win it. But it was very, very interesting because there were many people that wanted it and all of them wanted to make it a movie.”
Lauren says she and Scott make a “good team” as collaborators, in part because they have opposite and complementary strengths. “He has this unbelievable gift as a writer that I could only dream of having. I think the story and the dialogue and all of those puzzle pieces are so clear to him from the creative side,” she says of Scott, an Oscar nominee for co-writing “The Disaster Artist” with fellow “Daisy Jones” co-creator Michael H. Weber. “I really love taking all of the puzzle pieces and the vision, and then helping to put it all together and bring it to life. I love the hustle and I’m not afraid of the hard conversation. I just love to go-go-go. So we wound up loving being a team.”
“Daisy Jones” was initially supposed to shoot in early 2020, but the production had to stop for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. During that break, the show’s cast – including Emmy nominee Riley Keough, who plays Daisy, and Sam Claflin, who stars as rock star Billy Dunne – honed their performing skills and credibly turned into a band. The group plays its own instruments in the show and Keough and Claflin also sing; the project resulted in a Daisy Jones and the Six album called “Aurora” that hit No. 1 on the charts.
Lauren says executive the show’s “epic scale,” particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, was a constant challenge the team had to overcome.
“We were shooting these massive concert sequences, but there was a maximum number of background actors that we could have participating,” she says. Often, it was Emmy-nominated music supervisor Frankie Pine amping up a crowd of background actors to help create some level of believable noise inside an empty concert arena.
“Making a show about sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the middle of the pandemic – and really making sure that we were doing it in a way where we were being incredibly safe, incredibly responsible, protecting every member of our cast and crew, but also not compromising the integrity of the show [was a challenge],” Lauren says. “I really feel like our studio and our creative team on this just never compromised. We really pulled it off and I feel so proud of what we did. But I do think when you think about what was the hardest thing and the biggest challenge, it was just not shrinking the scale and being true to what the story wanted to be – being true to Taylor’s vision and to ours, despite many obstacles, and I feel very proud of what we accomplished.”
“Daisy Jones and the Six” is a limited series but since the show ended, fans have wondered if the world first created by Reid and expanded in the television adaptation has more stories to tell. Lauren says there have been no real conversations about what a continuation of the show might look like due to the current writers’ strike. But she did express some hope that the show’s fictional band would unite for a concert – at least once the current actors’ strike concluded.
“I do feel like it would be all of our dreams to get to be together again and continue telling the story for a bunch of reasons. You can tell that we really love each other” Lauren says. “But hearing the band perform live would be the ultimate dream come true. So we’ve been trying to do it.”
As Lauren explains, since the band is made up of actors, the group’s first priority is performing commitments. “But I will say I think it’s a very ‘all for one and one for all’ sort of circumstance where we want everybody to be able to be together if and when they perform,” she says of a possible future concert. “I hope that when the strike is over, there is a great time for that because I think I would certainly love to see them perform again. I feel like it’s not fair that such a small group of us got to see them perform live, I feel like it would be great for all the fans to have the opportunity to see it. So I’m working hard to make it happen. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.”
“Daisy Jones and the Six” is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
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