Suki Waterhouse on “Daisy Jones & the Six”, composing sad songs

It’s been a wild ride for rock goddess Suki Waterhouse.

The shaggy-haired model-turned-actor-singer has spent more than two years portraying a tenacious keyboardist for the hit Prime video series “Daisy Jones & the Six” — dropping the final two episodes about a fictional band from the ’70s this Friday — while pursuing her very real music career.

A few months before the show premiered atop the TV and music charts, Waterhouse headlined a 22-night tour, including a sold-out show at New York’s Webster Hall. Bathed in a lilac light and wearing Saint Laurent spandex pants with a sheer turtleneck top, she sang poignant tracks from her debut album, “I Can’t Let Go of Her,” in front of an adoring audience who knew the words.

“It was one of the greatest nights of my life,” the glamorous, 31-year-old told Alexa. “It’s only been a year since I’ve been on stage, and the rooms have grown from 100 people to almost 2,000 people so quickly. I was kind of amazed.”

Waterhouse was on a tightly scheduled promotional tour for the Daisy Jones song, the week of the Alexa cover shoot, showing up around town in glam retro outfits. For a photo shoot at the Empire State Building with the cast, she looked like she stepped out of a time machine in Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini denim pants, an Adrienne Landau faux fur coat, flower necklace and giant sunglasses.

In similarly graceful outfits, Waterhouse played big concerts for her role in “Daisy Jones,” the adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reed’s bestselling novel of the same name. The book is partly inspired by the epic love story between Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac, and Lindsey Buckingham. In the series, Riley Keough (Elvis Presley’s granddaughter) and Sam Claflin play lead singers grappling with jealousy, addiction, and a damaged childhood. Waterhouse’s character, Karen Sirko, was loosely based on the supergroup’s English keyboardist and vocalist, the late Christine McPhee.

To prepare for her part, Waterhouse was scheduled to take three months of intensive piano lessons. But with stops and starts related to COVID-19, that period spilled over into a year and a half of lessons and rehearsals for three hours a day at Sound City, the legendary Los Angeles recording studio.

“I was so terrible at first, doing nursery rhymes, and then within a year, doing Bach pieces,” she says. “Actually, had it not been for the pandemic, we would probably have been a complete disaster musically. We had 12 songs to learn—studio versions and live versions—and it would change a lot. They really wanted us to be absolutely confident and play every note right.”

Catchy melodies fill out “Aurora,” the blockbuster record that the fictional group dropped before their breakup. Grammy Award-winning producer and guitarist Blake Mills has co-written and produced original music with Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, Jackson Browne, Taylor Goldsmith, Madison Cunningham, and other friends. The result was so strong that a physical album backed by Atlantic Records featuring tracks sung by the staff was released on March 2. Within hours, it had reached No. 1 on the US iTunes charts (a first for a fictional band), while the vinyl version summed up Amazon.

“I’m in heaven,” said one YouTube listener. “I need more,” I begged another.

Filming the Six’s final show (at New Orleans’ Tad Gormley Stadium, dressed to look like Chicago’s Soldier Field) turned into a near-harrowing adventure.

“We’re all testing, Sam has coronavirus, and we’ll have to hold off a few more days or a week,” Waterhouse recalls. “And then we’re back on the football field and we’re about to get back on stage. And there’s a massive storm, and the stage starts to fall down. We stay inside our trailers, we can’t move and there’s lightning. There were a lot of anticipatory moments.” But in the end, they captured the adrenaline and exuberance of the last concert before the band called it quits.

Music has always been a passion for Waterhouse, who has written and written songs for years. But the sweet London girl—daughter of eminent plastic surgeon Norman Waterhouse and his wife Elizabeth, an oncology nurse—got her start in modeling. Several years after she was discovered in a store, she was named the face of Burberry perfume “Brit Rhythm” and appeared on the covers of magazines such as British Elle, Tatler, L’Officiel and British Vogue. Hailed as a millennial goddess with wispy bangs, big eyebrows, an eclectic wardrobe, and glamorous childhood friends like Georgia May Jagger and Cara Delevingne, she had a nonchalant quality and cheeky smile that the camera loved.

High-profile relationships only add to her appeal. Then, she dated English musician Miles Kane for two years Actor met Bradley Cooper At the awards ceremony when she was 21 years old Invitation to a dinner party at the White House — where she “looked rubbish” due to a hilarious hairstyling disaster — and her chic appearances at the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Met Gala and London Fashion Week. after Their painful breakupShe has been linked on and off with actor Diego Luna, whom she met on the set of their movie ‘The Bad Batch’.

over the past five years, She was going strong with Robert Pattinson Famous for “Twilight” and “Batman”. The humble couple lives together in London and Los Angeles and has been photographed kissing in the parks or on nights out, but she is cautious about their romance.

“There’s so much to love about him, I’ll be here all day,” Waterhouse objects, unfailingly poised, thoughtful, and personally polite. “We just support each other, and that’s the most important thing.”

Just as Waterhouse’s acting career was taking off in 2016 following her roles in ‘The Divergent Series: Insurgent’ and ‘The Bad Batch’, she self-released a shrill and confessional single titled ‘Brutally’.

“It was kind of in the midst of that sad, depressive phase of my life, and it was the time when I felt like it was all coming to an end. It was a song of firsts: my first big heartbreak, the first time I felt like I had written something I was willing to share and the first song I had released” .

“My early 20s were completely fraught with lacking boundaries and suddenly becoming a public person. It’s like a little shock in a way, especially when you’re so young.”

I’ve cautiously slipped one track a year and finally gained the confidence to release a full-length record, this past May via Sub Pop. It took me years to feel ready to make the album. It came from this simple need to be able to understand what was going on around me and with relationships falling apart. Also, if I’m being honest with myself, my early 20s were quite fraught with a lack of boundaries and I became Suddenly a public person. It’s like a little bit of a shock in a way, especially when you’re so young. You basically walked out of your parents’ house and found yourself dealing with a lot, and you don’t have all the tools yet.”

Her fragile, reflective, and bold album reflects the drama of a life lived unexpectedly in the spotlight. The sad Melrose Meltdown captures the grief of a broken relationship and makes reference to a scene that actually happened on the Sunset Strip.

“I was in the middle of a breakup and left the palace [Marmont hotel] With a few hundred diamonds that the security guy told me to take back,” Waterhouse explains sarcastically.

In November, she followed up her freshman effort with “Milk Teeth”, an EP with six songs and a set of shows in Europe and the UK.

Now that “Daisy Jones” has been released, Waterhouse is back on the road, playing her own music at Lollapalooza festivals in South America. She’ll be performing again on the East Coast this spring with gigs in Atlanta and a ball in Queens.

When not wandering the globe, Waterhouse just wants to give nesting a spin. “Free time is like picking out a sofa with my boyfriend. This is a part of my life that I really enjoy now. I try to figure out what kind of bed sheets I want and pick out the pictures I want to frame. If I’m not working, I want to invest all my time in making home feel like I’m in the home “.

Looks like she could add a homegrown goddess to her growing resume.

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Fashion Editor: Serena French; designer: Anahita Mousavian; Photo Editor: Jessica Huber; Costume assistant: Madeline Shepherd; Hair: Kevin Ryan for Frankie Salon. Make-up: Maria Riskakis at The Wall Group; Manicure: Aki Hirayama at Tracy Mattingly