It’s universally accepted, or at least understood, that when a piece of fiction is adapted from a novel to a movie or TV show, it will come with changes. Rarely can two different art forms intersect without some reconfiguration. That’s exactly what happened when Amazon Studios picked up the rights to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s popular New York Times bestselling novel Daisy Jones & The Six.
Recommended VideosThe 10-episode limited series has been on the tip of every fan’s tongue since Amazon announced in 2019 that it planned to shepherd the show to the limelight alongside Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine. It took nearly four years, but after a worldwide pandemic, intense musical training from the cast, and some patience, it has lived to see the day.
On March 3, 2022, the first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six were released, featuring pitch-perfect casting from Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough as the titular character, Sam Claflin as her star-crossed lover Billy Dunne, and Camila Morrone as Claflin’s on-screen wife Camila Dunne.
In fact, it’s almost unheard of for fandom to harbor little to no animosity at an adaptation’s casting choices. By and large, Daisy Jones & The Six pulled it off without a hitch. Except, they left out one major detail. Better yet, an entire character: Pete Loving.
What happened to Pete?
Within the first episode, it became clear that Pete Loving, our beloved bassist from the book, was not going to make the cut in Amazon’s adaptation. He’s not just elbowed out, he’s completely absent.
In the source material, Pete is one of the six members of The Six. He’s introduced as Eddie’s brother, and even though he’s largely left out of the story on the page, his presence is vital in that without him there would be no “six” in The Six.
In the book, Pete Loving becomes a member of The Six only after bandmate Chuck Williams tragically dies while on deployment in Vietnam. This leaves the band a member down. Eddie Loving employs his brother Pete to take Chuck’s place as the bassist, and thus The Six were born.
On the show, however, Pete Loving is combined with Chuck Williams to create an entirely new character: Chuck Loving. In the first episode, Chuck Loving quits the band to pursue dentistry school.
What’s more, Eddie Loving from the books is no longer Eddie Loving on the show — he’s renamed Eddie Roundtree, and he makes up the fifth member of The Six. Quick math will tell you that there’s a vital error here. The band can’t be Daisy Jones & The Six if there are only five band members plus Daisy. Well, the show’s executive producers accounted for all of that.
Camila’s storyline was a big reason for Pete’s cut
As mentioned, adaptions can only copy and paste so much without messing with the structure of their intended medium. To pull off a TV show, more members of the band would need to get screen time, which meant there wasn’t room for Eddie, Chuck, and Pete. In the show, there’s only Eddie.
“We knew from the start that we wanted to give fans the chance to step more fully into some of the supporting character stories, the other people in the band,” said Will Graham, one of the show’s executive producers, according to TVLine.
“And we knew that in order to do that well, we needed to have a manageable number of characters. So we did a little consolidation. For anyone who loved Pete, we’re sorry, but we got to spend so much more time with Teddy, and so much more time with Eddie, and so much more time with Simone, and really realize full arcs for those characters. So that was kind of the root of that decision.”
With just Eddie, the show is able to flesh out Camila’s storyline more, to such an extent that she is named an honorary member of the band, rounding out that “six” in Daisy Jones & The Six. In the second episode, Karen (Suki Waterhouse) suggests the band change its name from the Dunne Brothers to The Six. Eddie, ever the pessimist, points out that there are only five of them. That’s when Karen points to Camila, who mouths back, “Thank you.”
As we see on the show, Camila is the backbone of the band and the main reason they flew so close to the sun. Without her mail and phone outreach, they likely never would’ve received the exposure they did.
“I do like to think of Camila as the glue that holds it all together,” said Camila Morrone says. “There is a very silent, powerful energy to her. You don’t realize how essential her character is in the forming of the band and of the continuation of the band until kind of Episode 10, when things take a turn. That was what really attracted me [to the role] was, like, wow, this girl that’s in the background and is not on the forefront all the time is really the thing that propels this group of people.”
Best of all, the casting change has Taylor Jenkins Reid’s stamp of approval. “There’s a very specific reason that Pete exists in the book that is unnecessary for the adaptation,” she said. “So I feel bad, but we don’t need Pete. If you miss Pete, the book’s right there for you.”
Daisy Jones & The Six is currently available to stream on Prime Video. New episodes release every Friday.
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