'Nashville' Season 4: Hayden Panettiere and Dee Johnson Preview Juliette's Arc

ABC’s Nashville returns tonight for its fourth season, and while executive producer Dee Johnson won’t say what happened in that operating room during Deacon’s liver transplant — we’ll find out soon enough, when the episode picks up a month later — she and Hayden Panettiere did offer Yahoo TV some teases of what’s to come.

The theme of the season, Johnson says, is "the public perception versus the private reality.” For Juliette (Panettiere), who continues to suffer from postpartum depression, it means the world believing that the new mom has it all. Career-wise, she’s more successful than ever. “At least in the first part of the season, she spends a significant amount of time hiding in her success,” Johnson says. It means we get to see Juliette duet with guest star Steven Tyler in the premiere, but that Juliette never sees Avery or their child.

“She’s abandoned her family, and she’s neglected her daughter,” Panettiere says, adding that Juliette prefers to stay on the road with her new entourage. “New personalities that she’s picked up along the way are assisting her down this road to destruction,” she says. “As Dee said to me, things are going to get worse before they get better.”

We’ll see moments of the feisty Juliette we know and love, but, Panettiere says, “you can see behind her eyes that there is something going on, something that’s taking a major toll on her. She’s trying to wipe that away by numbing it with alcohol and other things.”

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Though she’s enjoying playing the darker side of Juliette, Panettiere shares fans’ desire for a light at the end of the tunnel. “I hope she does get her s–t together,” she says with a laugh, “and learns what’s important in life and stops running away from what will bring her the most happiness.” In the meantime, look for her to reach out to Rayna, sort of. “Something happens and Juliette has a moment and can’t think of anyone else to reach out to but her, and then she denies that it ever happened and shuts the door in Rayna’s face. Figuratively,” Panettiere says. And expect to see different sides to her new relationships with manager Jeff Fordham and label head Luke Wheeler. “Jeff’s always been the bad guy, but now her success means his success, and he’s trying to wrangle her and protect her from herself, which is not an easy thing to do,” she says. “[Eventually], she kind of drags Luke into her idea of fun. It’s really dark if you think about what her idea of fun is.”

As for Rayna, she’ll learn that the public perception of her label, Highway 65, is that it’s a failed vanity project. She’ll try to salvage it by signing a recently disbanded rocker (True Blood’s Riley Smith) who wants to go country. “It’s a little bit of a 'careful what you wish for’ situation,” Johnson says. “A big star comes with a pretty big ego."

Luke, meanwhile, is well on his way to making himself a global brand and will, early in the season, bring on an image consultant (Cynthia McWilliams) that becomes integral to his storyline. He’s asked Will, who’s now out of the closet, to stay out of sight for a spell. “It was an impulsive thing that Will did, and I think Will’s going to take a little bit of time to figure out where he fits in, where he feels comfortable,” Johnson says. “Will always wanted to be Luke Wheeler, and I don’t know if that realistically can happen in the short term.”

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Scarlett is now living with her doctor boyfriend, and regretting that she and Gunnar almost kissed. “Their relationship is an on-again off-again Pandora’s box,” Johnson says. “They had closed it for a while, and in the finale it peeked open. Now that they are an official duo, how do they move forward from there with this Pandora’s box having been opened?”

Speaking of wanting more, Layla and Jeff have reached an understanding. “I think they have a very weird, but sincere relationship with one another. We’re not saying the ‘L’ word, but there are real feelings there,” Johnson says.

Two final teases: Rayna’s girls will be dealing with the blowback of Teddy’s arrest and some new friction. “I think that they are at a critical juncture, especially as a team. When one of them is older and on that track to being older, and the other is still very much a girl, they are in very different head spaces,” Johnson says.

And Avery will have space to do his own thing. “I think he’s given an opportunity to reexamine what he wants in his life and what makes him happy,” Johnson says. “He’s going to be doing a little exploring in that regard.”

Nashville Season 4 premieres Sept. 23 at 10 p.m. on ABC.