‘Nashville’ wrapping series with the return of Britton
The curtain has closed on musical melodrama “Nashville” — this time for good.
It was a wild, six-year ride for the series that originally premiered on ABC in 2012 but was canceled by the broadcaster four years later. Cable station CMT picked up the series just weeks later in 2016, staking a claim in scripted television. Over the years, the show saw births, deaths and scalds on-screen and showrunner changes and the exit of one of its stars (Connie Britton) behind-the-scenes. Of course the series finale had to go out in an equally big way, says executive producer Marshall Herskovitz, to match up to the “outrageous” saga it always was.
And what better way to do that than to see Britton, whose country music sensation character Rayna James died in the penultimate season, return?
“I knew that to end the show without her would have left a big hole in me, and I think it would have for a lot of fans, and I think, certainly, for the cast,” says creator Callie Khouri. “Everybody wanted her to come back.”
Fans had flooded Khouri’s and Herskovitz’s Twitter feeds with pleas for her return. One of the most popular suggestions involved revealing her death to be a dream.
Instead, though, Rayna came to her widower Deacon in a memory from their wedding night, offering him words of comfort and love as he prepared to go on his first solo tour — a milestone Rayna always wished for him.
“It was so exciting,” Khouri says of Britton’s return to the set. “Everybody was just kind of giddy having her there.”
While Herskovitz says Britton’s comeback was “one of the first conversations” the “Nashville” team had when the end date was in sight, scheduling wasn’t easy. Britton had to cut a mother-son spring break trip to Mexico short in order to fly out to Nashville, Tenn. for her two-day filming schedule. But the TV drama veteran was happy to do it.
“Being on the Ryman stage, reunited with six years of cast and crew, is a moment I’ll cherish and never forget,” Britton says.
Earlier, several diegetic water cooler scenes led up to Britton’s reveal and the farewell address to the TV audience. For example, up-and-coming artist Alannah (Rainee Blake) had a #MeToo moment. When the nefarious music mogul Brad (Jeffrey Nordling) invited Alannah up to his hotel room for what he described as a party, she instead arrived at his room to find him alone, expecting her to fulfill an “implicit contract.”
When Brad tried to force himself on her, Alannah pushed him off and made for the door as a gesture to terminate their collaboration. But Brad wouldn’t let Alannah leave before saying she’ll “never work again” in a sequence that played out like a Harvey Weinstein expose.
“It was certainly influenced — but not inspired by that,” Herskovitz says.
The finale also wrapped up some of the show’s longstanding on-and-off relationships with happy endings. After years of passionate sex, harsh breakups, screaming matches and tears, Avery (Jonathan Jackson) and Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) decided to try to make it work again.
Each day on the show after day one has been a dream come true for Khouri, who admits she had very little faith in the series when she created it.
“When we started, I was so skeptical,” Khouri says. “I was like, ‘They’re never gonna make a show about Nashville. That’s not gonna happen.’ And then everybody would be so excited, and I’d go, ‘Yeah, well it’s not gonna get picked up.’ ”
But six years later, with one unexpected cancellation behind her, Khouri has been grateful for the chance to finish the series on her own terms — though the characters will live on in her mind forever.