Lindsey Buckingham says he and Stevie Nicks have moved beyond the conflict that followed his departure from Fleetwood Mac, with work on the band’s upcoming documentary helping repair relationships that had remained strained for years.
Speaking at Variety’s Power of Young Hollywood event this week, Buckingham said he and his former partner and longtime bandmate are now in regular contact.
“Stevie and I are talking all the time now,” Buckingham told E! News.
He described the renewed communication as fitting for two people whose personal and creative histories have remained intertwined for more than five decades, while crediting the documentary with helping Fleetwood Mac’s surviving members revisit unresolved tensions.
Buckingham Says He and Nicks Are Talking Regularly Again
“Stevie and I are talking all the time now,” Buckingham said during an E! News red-carpet interview. “And so it’s really… that’s appropriate to our history.” Buckingham said the change developed as Fleetwood Mac worked on an authorized documentary about the band’s career.
“I think the process of making that has been a very circular healing process for all of us,” he said. The guitarist acknowledged that relationships within the group had been left in a difficult place following the period surrounding his exit and Fleetwood Mac’s subsequent tour.
“No one was happy about it, and all of that has been healed and worked out,” Buckingham said. He stopped short of suggesting that renewed communication automatically means another Fleetwood Mac tour or reunion is coming. For Buckingham, he said, repairing those relationships was itself “the most important thing.”
The Documentary Helped Bring the Band Back Into Conversation
Apple Original Films announced the authorized Fleetwood Mac documentary in November 2024. Frank Marshall, whose music documentaries include films about the Bee Gees and the Beach Boys, is directing.
Apple said the project will allow Fleetwood Mac to tell its story in the members’ own words through new interviews, archival material and never-before-seen footage. Archival interviews with Christine McVie, who died in 2022, will also be featured. Buckingham now says the process did more than document the band’s history.
Revisiting the decades of music, relationships and internal conflicts apparently forced the surviving members to address some of the tensions that remained after their last period together. The documentary has not yet received a publicly announced title. Current reporting places its release in 2027.
The Rift Followed Buckingham’s 2018 Fleetwood Mac Exit
Buckingham was removed from Fleetwood Mac ahead of the band’s 2018 tour and later sued the group over his departure. The lawsuit was settled later that year. He subsequently blamed Nicks for his removal, telling PEOPLE in 2021 that she had given the band an ultimatum in which either he or she would leave. Nicks disputed his version.
She called Buckingham’s account “revisionist history” and said she had instead decided to remove herself from what she considered a situation that had become toxic to her well-being. “If the band went on without me, so be it,” she said at the time. As Entertainment Weekly noted, Buckingham now describes those issues as having been “healed and worked out.”
‘Buckingham Nicks’ Offered an Earlier Sign of a Thaw
In September 2025, Buckingham and Nicks’ 1973 album Buckingham Nicks received its first official reissue. The record, their only studio album as a duo, was newly remastered from the original analog master tapes and became officially available on CD and digital platforms for the first time.
Originally released before the pair joined Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham Nicks had spent decades unavailable through official digital services despite becoming an important part of the story of how they entered the band. The two also participated separately in a Song Exploder episode about “Frozen Love” later in 2025.
Nicks revealed during that appearance that she and Buckingham had spoken the night before, another indication that communication between them had resumed before Buckingham publicly described them as talking “all the time.”
Buckingham Teased an ‘Interesting’ 2027
Buckingham was more cautious when asked whether the improved relationships could eventually lead to Fleetwood Mac performing together again. He did point toward 2027 as a potentially significant year. The year will mark the 50th anniversary of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s landmark 1977 album, while the documentary is also expected to arrive around that period.
Buckingham reflected on how closely the record’s songs were tied to the personal turmoil inside the band, including his breakup with Nicks and the collapse of Christine and John McVie’s marriage. “The Rumours album was a musical soap opera and it was all true,” he told PEOPLE at the Variety event.
He said one of his greatest sources of pride is that Fleetwood Mac managed to rise above those conflicts long enough to create music that endured. As for what the repaired relationships and anniversary could produce next, Buckingham offered only a tease. “Next year should be a pretty interesting year,” he said. “Because I think quite a few things will reveal themselves.”