‘Nashville’: Lennon Stella and EP Marshall Herskovitz Preview New Season
They say that life moves a little slower down South. That’s an axiom that Nashville intends to demonstrate when it returns for its fifth season on Jan. 5 on CMT, the country music drama’s new home after ABC brought the curtain down on the Callie Khouri-created series in May. “One of the things I said early on is that we were going to slow down the storytelling,” says Marshall Herskovitz, who has assumed showrunning duties on Nashville with his longtime collaborator Ed Zwick. “We’re not burning up story as quickly as the show did in the past. The idea was to take these wonderful characters and extraordinary cast, and ground the whole thing a little more. It’s still Nashville, but it’s concentrating more deeply on each character.”
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That’s an approach to storytelling that not only complements speed of life in America’s country music capital, but also squares with Herskovitz and Zwick’s longtime creative ethos. The duo’s defining shows — including Thirtysomething (which celebrates its 30th anniversary this September), My So-Called Life and Once and Again — were notable and trend-setting in the way they bore down deeply into the lives of their characters, trusting that audiences would relate to their day-to-day dramas. It was a philosophy that often tested the patience of network executives. Herskovitz recalls a meeting with an ABC executive years ago where he was lectured on the importance of “density of storytelling,” which was defined to him as, “things happening so quickly that the audience doesn’t have a chance to get bored.”
“That’s been a successful model [for some shows], but it’s never been our approach, and it’s not an approach I know how to do,” Herskovitz says now. But it is the approach that seemed to govern Nashville in previous years, particularly during the fourth season, when a parade of manufactured conflicts — some believable, many others considerably less so — rushed through town, leaving both the characters and fans exhausted. Remember the time that Deacon (Chip Esten) decided to move into bar management despite being an alcoholic? How about Rayna (Connie Britton) trying to help that aspiring country singer who was living out of her car? And then there was Riff, best friend and retired bandmate of Luke Wheeler (Will Chase), who was introduced and then ended up in a coma in the span of three episodes.
Fortunately, audiences will discover that those ignoble incidents, and many others, have been conveniently pushed to the margins when they re-enter Nashville. “We have chosen different paths in some situations,” says Herskovitz. “There was a way in which, last year, Deacon was made to act out in a kind of rage that you had never seen in the character before. It didn’t feel like who Deacon really was. So we’re just not following that part of the storyline; we’re being truer to what we feel Deacon has been all along.”
Related: ‘Nashville’ EP Ed Zwick Talks Season 5 And His Storied TV Career
At the same time, there were certain incidents that were too big to ignore — like the fact that the last time we saw Juliette (Hayden Panettiere), she was onboard a doomed plane. “That was something we had to deal with, and I think we dealt with it in a great way,” Herskovitz says. “The stories we’re doing aren’t trying to contradict what happened before, but I think they exist in a different psychic space. It’s more about how these characters feel about each other, and what their interactions are. And, by the way, that existed on the show before! But it was often interrupted by the need to have very powerful external events take place. The show seemed pulled in two directions, and we decided to concentrate on the more intimate part.”
One other controversial storyline that hasn’t been forgotten is one that we’ve chosen to call “The Emancipation of Maddie Conrad,” a season-long arc that saw Rayna’s eldest daughter (played by real-life singer Lennon Stella) declaring her independence from her parents in painfully contrived fashion. “I can totally see where it seemed a little much, just because her parents have done nothing but spoil her and be amazing to her,” Stella tells Yahoo TV about her alter ego’s behavior. “Storyline-wise, it was great because there’s a lot of drama that comes with it, and this is a television show filled with drama. As far as Maddie’s character goes, it was absolutely quite dramatic. But that’s Maddie — she’s always dramatic!”
While the season premiere clears up her employment status, casting the deal she signed with Cash Gray (Jessy Schram) to the side, Maddie is still legally emancipated — even though she’s back at home with her parents. “It creates a weird dynamic between them,” Stella teases, adding that a new love interest will further complicate Maddie’s life. “She’s facing real teenage problems this year that I think a lot of teens and young adults will be able to relate to.” Those problems also make her relatable to her younger sister, Daphne (played by Stella’s real-life sibling, Maisy), who is going through her own growth spurt. “Daphne is also getting older and starting to experience lady things, and Maddie has this new boy [in her life],” says Stella. “It’s bringing them closer.”
Stella joins Herskovitz’s chorus that the fifth season of Nashville will put character first. “They’re really diving into the storylines rather than skimming across them,” she says. “Everyone is taking the time to care about the characters and get to know them.” That includes both familiar faces and new personalities like Silicon Valley billionaire, Zach Welles (Cameron Scoggins), who seems to have a hankering to break into the country music business, as well as Hallie Jordan (Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens), who will play a big role in Juliette’s post-plane crash life. Herskovitz points to Giddens’s casting in particular as a renewed attempt to diversify the look and sound of Nashville as it heads into what he hopes will be a creatively renewing year. “None of us felt that the show really felt what Nashville is like today,” he explains. “It’s a diverse city artistically and demographically. There’s a cross-pollinization of music in Nashville that’s amazing: People playing different genres like hip-hop, country, rock and bluegrass are all working together. It’s not just the country music capital — it’s the musical crossroads of the world.”
Nashville premieres on Jan. 5 at 9 p.m. on CMT; new episodes will also be available on Hulu.
