In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Riley Keough shared how her family’s musical background influenced her portrayal of Daisy Jones in the new series Daisy Jones and the Six. As the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, Keough is no stranger to the world of rock music. However, she admits that despite her family’s musical talents, she had never played guitar or tried singing before landing the role of Daisy.
“My whole family are musicians, so I certainly have a lot of experience around musicians,” she said. “I’m very familiar with musicians, but I’m also very not familiar with singing or playing guitar. Like at all.”
Keough also dated a few musicians in the past, which helped her understand the world of rock music and the characters in the show. However, when it came to actually learning how to play guitar and sing, Keough and co-star Sam Claflin had to start from scratch.
“It was an interesting thing coming to work and telling my guitar teacher that I’ve never picked up a guitar,” she said. “He was like, ‘What? That sounds crazy to me.’ And it is kind of crazy (laughs). But I always have been more interested in films. So, me and Sam had to start from the bottom and learn everything.”
Despite her family’s connection to rock music, Keough says that her portrayal of Daisy was not influenced by her grandfather Elvis. Showrunner Scott Neustadter also confirmed that the Southern California sound of the 1970s, which the show is based on, is very different from Elvis’s music.
“It never came up,” Neustadter said. “That so had nothing to do with why she was there that she never brought it up, and we never did either.”
However, Neustadter did reveal that a practical change was made during filming to avoid distracting the audience. “At the Formosa Cafe, we were going to film in a booth,” he explained. “And literally, they have like a shrine to Elvis over the booth and we were like, ‘Let’s move that [scene] over here (laughs). It’s a little distracting.'”
Despite any potential influence from her family’s musical background, audiences are sure to fall in love with Keough’s performance as the wild and talented Daisy Jones when Daisy Jones and the Six premieres on Prime Video on March 3.
