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John Lydon ditched the Sex Pistols at the close of their U.S. tour.
For the Smiths, it was Johnny Marr who hung up his guitar.
John Lennon left the Beatles.
Zayn Malik deserted One Direction.
And for the fictional 1970s megabandDaisy Jones & the Six, Eddie Roundtree was the first domino to fall.
He was a bassist with rhythm-guitar dreams, a background player who fancied himself a front man.
Even if Eddie hadnt quit, he absolutely could not stay.
Or you might recognize him from the 2019 Netflix Christmas movieThe Knight Before Christmas.
People love a villain if theyre owning being the villain, Whitehouse says.
I was like,You cant just be a grumpy guy for no reason.
I wanted to bring some reason and lovability to him.
In the end, I settled on the supervillain story.
By the end of the season, its just like, Fuck you.
Inthe finale, Billy introduces Eddie to the crowd at Soldier Field quite warmly.
Eddie says, I love you, bro, and Billy tells him to go fuck himself.
He still wants it.
Billy is always unkind to Eddie, and Eddies always clamoring for his attention.
When you saw that in the script, did you lose your mind?That was a shocker.
They edited a lot of it out, actually.
The affair does play out cryptically.
I was like,Hold on, wait.
Thats very much left to the imagination.But maybe thats for the best.
When we did the table read, I was absolutely cracking up at the idea.
Its like every time he walks in the room, Eddie just bolts in the other direction.
And Billys always like, Whats up with Eddie?
Its sad, actually.
Was the casting process grueling?Yeah!
First, I went for Billy, and I did three auditions.
Then I went in and played some songs, and it disappeared.
I was like,Oh, well, that shows gone.
Months later it came back around for Eddie.
The casting department was so kind to me.
I did four tapes just for them.
They encouraged me to be more chip-on-my-shoulder-ish.
At the time, I hadnt read the book, and they were helping me understand Eddies gripes.
Once Id done those four auditions, there was a series of Zoom auditions with producers and the director.
Then I got flown out to L.A. and did chemistry reads in front of the whole cast.
Lets talk about filming the big performance scenes.
How realistic were they?Its very surreal.
We were also jumping back and forth between different concerts from different parts of the story.
Now Eddies pissed off.
Now you guys are all best friends.
It got very confusing.
At a point, I kind of stopped listening.
I was like, Just hit play.
Wed all practiced it so much that we could snap in.
To my mind, Eddie evolves the least over time.
Theres a line where Eddies like, Holding on to that stuff will be the death of you.
He knows hes completely holding on to it, and it really pissed him off.
By the time hes older, hes still bitter.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
