While “Nashville” officially returns Jan. 5, on new home CMT, the proud network announced this week it’ll air the first hour of the two-hour premiere Dec. 15.
That’s good news, of course, but there’s even better news in this new trailer — which should answer most of your immediate questions, but we might as well just tell you right away: Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) is going to live.
We can tell you this firstly because she is the star of the show, billed right between “Connie Britton’s Hair*” and “Connie Britton Herself,” and secondly because of the trailer, which prominently features Juliette not dying:
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*(Header image courtesy Frazer Harrison/Getty, from the premiere of a pretty good movie called “American Ultra,” and found by googling “Connie Britton hair” — which is probably to be found already in your internet search history, if you’re anything like us.)
The Facts
Episodes will be up on CMT’s partner in this venture Hulu the next day — and the series to date is already there in case you let it fall by the wayside. With new showrunners, a slimmed-down cast, and some major changes to its storytelling, “Nashville” creators and crew seem authentically “elated” at the direction the show will be taking, and so are we:
- CMT continues to describe “Nashville” as following the personal and professional trials of Juliette and Rayna Jaymes (Britton) — so the focus will hopefully stay on them. (Everybody else is also very nice, but we know why we’re here.) Juliette’s nightmare experience will inspire Rayna, as most things do, to go on a personal “journey of discovery.”
- Will Lexington (Chris Carmack) hooks up with a new dude, Jakob (“Looking’s” possibly greatest character, Murray “Dom” Bartlett), while Juliette’s recovery will bring her into alignment with new character Allyson Del Lago, a transgender woman played by Jen Richards (writer/co-star of “Her Story” and frequent guest on “I Am Cait”)
Multiple sources quote creator Callie “Thelma & Louise” Khouri — and the new showrunners — openly admitting the ridiculous twists and turns on later seasons were a result of being on ABC, home of OMG hits like “Scandal” and (at the time) “Revenge.” So the new version of the show will still be dramatic and emotional — just not bizarre. To wit:
- Scarlett O’Connor (Clare Bowen) and Gunnar Scott (Sam Palladio), and Daphne (Maisy Stella) and good ol’ Maddie Conrad (Lennon Stella), still exist, but
- Layla Grant (Aubrey Peeples) is out
- Luke Wheeler (Will Chase) is gone — but not forgotten
- There are rumors of a baby…
- And there are rumors of drama — of course — with Rayna and Deacon (Charles Esten), but possibly…
- Those are the same rumor?
New Showrunners
You know who they are, probably: Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick‘s Bedford Falls is the company behind some of the greatest television shows of all time: “thirtysomething,” “My So-Called Life,” and “Once & Again.” (If you have not seen “Once & Again,” you are in for a treat. Phenomenal stuff.) They’re also film darlings: Zwick directed their 1994 smash “Legends of the Fall,” as well as “About Last Night…,” “Glory” and cult favorite “Leaving Normal” — and together they produced 2000’s “Traffic,” among about a thousand critical hits.
(They’ve also done some other work together, like “Jack the Bear,” “I Am Sam” which is a different movie, and some Tom Cruise vehicles like “The Last Samurai” and the forthcoming and inherently hilarious “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.”)
RELATED: How ‘recurring’ will Connie Britton be in ‘Nashville’ Season 5?
If you, like we, are trying to wrap your head around what this will even look like, here are some nuggets they shared with Entertainment Weekly.
On how to think about all this, and what parts will carry over:
Herskovitz: “There was a feeling that the show had run its course and that it needed, in some sense, a reboot to find its heart again. We were up for that because it meant going deeper with the characters, trying to do less story in each episode, and putting even more emphasis on the music.”
Zwick: “Callie is still with the show and it was Callie and T-Bone [Burnett], and their life in Nashville, that really animated that part of it. Coincidentally, my life has involved me with the music business a lot, just through friends and through putting music in movies, so I know enough to be dangerous — but Callie has lived it, and so has T-Bone, so that world is very accessible.”
On what the show “Nashville” actually wants to be:
Herskovitz: “[The show] actually wants to be very intimate. These people have a reservoir of emotion and connection with each other that goes very deep, and what we find is that these first few new episodes that we’ve done are very, very emotional. It’s been there embedded in the episodes, you could see it, but it wasn’t allowed to come to fruition before… [when] you have fewer stories per episode, you can go deeper in a story and really have something profound happen between two people.”
On the city Nashville itself, and what it is one of the last of, if not the last of:
Zwick: “Nashville itself is one of the last, if not the last, artist colony in America.”
RELATED: ‘Nashville’ is back — but will Juliette return as well?
On characters who may be course-corrected (besides J-Barnes):
Herskovitz: “[Very into] Deacon and Rayna as a relationship. The idea of what it means to be married has always been interesting to us — what are the dynamics, their individual triggers, how do they resolve conflict? It’s endlessly fascinating to talk about two adults trying to be in a relationship to each other, so that’s been really fun for us and for the actors to go deeper in that way. It’s been rejuvenating.”
Zwick: “Avery (Jonathan Jackson) came [into things] with a very strong dream of who he wanted to be. We said, there’s an opportunity for someone to try to rededicate himself to that or at least be aware of how much he might’ve lost it.”
On characters whose course is taking them straight off the television program:
Herskovitz: “The only way we could do the show we wanted was to say we’re not going to serve every story or character in every episode. That buys us the time to go deeper with each character when we do serve their story. And there are people we love who we just didn’t have room for in the narrative.”
Including Luke Wheeler, who is not very beloved except by yours truly, and the actor Will Chase, who is amazing:
Herskovitz: “Will Chase who plays Luke Wheeler is incredibly talented, but from a story standpoint, we didn’t know what to do with his character… We just brought him back in the last episode we shot and we were very happy because we love him, but we had to make choices about which characters we were going to follow.”
And also including Layla Grant, about whom no explanation is given — or honestly, required. (We are not Aubrey Peeples haters, though. “Jem & the Holograms” was a surprise delight, you can take our word for it, and we can’t wait to see what Aubrey does next. As long as it does not involve Layla Grant.)
On the show’s mission to rattle the cage of a dying music industry:
Herskovitz: “It was very important to us to bring in more diversity of music and of human beings. We have two new cast members who we love who I think people will love, and we’re also excited about the idea of different kinds of music. There’s an opportunity to broaden the palette, and that’s been really exciting.”
RELATED: Can Maddie step up her relationship game in Season 5 of ‘Nashville’?
Khouri has said before that she wants to use the show to inspire more folks to come out of their respective closets and be who they actually and authentically are — and if you have seen the show, you understand the binary there: An art that is literally about telling the truth about ourselves becomes so subsumed by money — panicked and doubling down on it even, as it crumbles — that artifice is the only way through.
(This is also the plot of the classic Aubrey Peeples film, “Jem & the Holograms,” which features the magnificent Ryan Guzman and, to be entirely honest, some of Juliette Lewis’s finest acting in decades. In addition, there is a robot in the film — and what it does may surprise you!)
Khouri knows, as really we all do, that’s a zero sum — that art unsupported by spirit devours itself, and taking aim at normative hate in any industry has become a virtuous battle — vide the biennial furor over gay professional sports players, or the nonstop, transparently ludicrous drama about queerness and sexual fluidity in Hollywood — for those with a platform.
Put those two things together — supporting authenticity in music, combating obsolete social ills and prejudices — and the show’s newfound love of diversity seems less like an agenda, and more like a holy mission. Pointing out this is all happening on CMT of all places might be a cheap shot, in another context, but in this case: It’s just another thing we’re grateful for.
Returning in January, “Nashville” heads to Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CMT.
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