Daisy Jones & The Six(72)

Karen: I took a pregnancy test in Portland. I’d kept it a secret from everybody. But then … that meant I was alone in my hotel room. Seeing the line turn pink or whatever color it was. I stared at it for a long time. And then I called Camila. I said, “I’m pregnant.” I said, “I don’t know what to do.”

Camila: I said, “Do you want a family?”

And she said, “No.” When she said “no …” it sounded like this croak. In her throat.

Karen: It was silent on the phone. And then Camila said, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

Graham: When we got to Vegas, I finally said, “C’mon, you have to talk to me.”

Karen: I just blurted it out. Told him. I said, “I’m pregnant.”

Graham: I didn’t know what to say.

Karen: He didn’t talk for a long time. Just paced around the room. I said, “I don’t want to do this. Go through with it.”

Graham: I figured she was just wrestling with it a bit. I said to her, “Let’s just give this some time. We still have time, right?”

Karen: I told him I wasn’t going to change my mind.

Graham: I said the wrong thing. I knew it was the wrong thing. I said, “We can get a different keyboardist, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Karen: I don’t really blame Graham, honestly. He was just thinking like most people. I said, “Do you understand how hard I worked to get here? I’m not giving this up.”

Graham: I didn’t want to say it but I thought it seemed selfish. Choosing anything over our baby.

Karen: He kept calling it “our baby.” Our baby our baby our baby.

Graham: I told her that she should just take some time. That’s all I said.

Karen: It was our baby but it was my responsibility.

Graham: People change their minds about this stuff all the time. You think you don’t want something and then you realize you do.

Karen: He said that I didn’t know what I was saying and that if I didn’t go forward with the pregnancy I’d regret it for the rest of my life. He just didn’t understand.

I wasn’t scared of regretting not having a child. But I was scared of regretting having a child.

I was scared of bringing an unwanted life into this world. I was scared of living my life, feeling like I’d anchored myself to the wrong dock. I was scared of being pushed to do something I knew I did not want. Graham didn’t want to hear it.

Graham: Things got heated and I stormed out. We had to have the conversation when we felt calm. You can’t scream about something like that.

Karen: My mind wasn’t going to change. I’ve been judged for it every time I’ve said it but I’ll keep saying it: I never wanted to be a mother. I never wanted children.

Graham: I just kept thinking, She’ll change her mind. I thought, We will get married and have a baby and figure it all out. She was going to realize how much she wanted to be a mother, how much family meant to her.





Daisy: After the Grammys, Billy and I started talking again. Well, sort of. We had just won for a song we wrote together, a song we sung together, and that resonated with me.

Billy: She leveled out. She loosened up. With Niccolo gone, it was … easier to have a conversation with her.

Daisy: We were on an overnight flight to New York to do Saturday Night Live. Rich had given us the Runner jet. I think almost everybody had fallen asleep. Billy was on the other side of the plane from me. But our chairs were sort of facing each other. I had on a tiny dress and I was cold and I took a blanket and wrapped it around myself and I saw Billy see me. And he laughed.

Billy: Some people will never stop being themselves. And you think it drives you crazy but it is the very thing you will think about when they are gone. When you don’t have them in your life anymore.

Daisy: I looked at him and I laughed, too. And it was, for a moment, at least, like we could be friends again.

Rod: By the time they did Saturday Night Live, “Young Stars” had become a hit, too. It was number 7 on the charts, I think. Somewhere in the Top Ten. We were selling so many albums they couldn’t print them fast enough. Runner had teed up “This Could Get Ugly” as the next hit.

Daisy: For SNL, the decision was that we would do “Turn It Off” as the first song, and then we would do “This Could Get Ugly” for the second.

Karen: I bet Warren that Daisy wouldn’t be wearing a bra and I won two hundred bucks.

Warren: We’re all deciding what we were gonna wear and I bet Karen fifty bucks that Billy wore a denim shirt and Daisy didn’t wear a bra. I won fifty bucks.

Karen: During dress, Daisy and Billy were actually speaking to each other. You could tell there had been a shift, somewhere.

Graham: We did the dress rehearsal for “Turn It Off” and it went really well. So did “This Could Get Ugly.”

Billy: When the show started, I planned on doing it just like we’d rehearsed.

Daisy: Lisa Crowne announced us, you know, “Ladies and gentlemen, Daisy Jones & The Six,” and the crowd went crazy. I’d been in huge stadiums with crowds cheering but it felt different. This small group of people just in front of us, making that much noise. It was this jolt of energy.

Nick Harris: By the time Daisy Jones & The Six performed “Turn It Off” on Saturday Night Live, they were performing a song almost everyone in the country knew. It was the Record of the Year.