The characters Hayden Panettiere and Connie Britton played on Nashville immediately got off to a bad start, which immediately put Panettiere in her feelings.
“I remember the first scene that I ever did with her. It was in [Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium], the backstage of the Ryman, and Rayna comes in and says something nice to me, and I am just so passive-aggressive to her,” Panettiere tells Entertainment Weekly on the occasion of the country music melodrama arriving on Netflix on Monday.
Panettiere remembers that after the bristling encounter — their first ever on and off camera — she “kept apologizing to her, going, ‘I am so sorry!’ Because that was our first experience together, and I didn’t want to step on toes. Sometimes it gets real, very real, you know?'”
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Britton’s established country queen Rayna James and Panettiere’s feisty rising star Juliette Barnes first cross paths in the opening scenes of the 2012 pilot episode. Juliette’s brought to Rayna’s dressing room and introduced as “a really big fan,” but when Rayna graciously extends her hand in greeting, Juliette smiles at her condescendingly, turns her gaze to Rayna’s producer Watty (JD Souther), and offers him instead an overly sugary greeting.
Panettiere explains that Nashville was originally designed as a solo vehicle for the Rayna character, but when producers saw the enthusiastic response to Panettiere as the brash, nakedly ambitious Juliette, the show was retconned around the character’s contentious rivalry as star signees of the same label.
“It was difficult to play that sometimes, that competitiveness, where we were in opposition and against each other,” Panettiere remembers. “And it’s not what we thought it was going to be, so it was very difficult to step in.” But Panettiere remembers Britton as “amazing” and “so supportive.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Britton for comment.
“Connie is just a class act. She is so smart and so wise, and just being able to be on screen with her, I was honored. I think we kept each other grounded throughout the whole thing,” Panettiere remembers.
Though Britton was only 22 to Britton’s 45 at the time of Nashville‘s first season, they both boarded the project boasting voluminous resumes. Britton had just come off a core role in the splashy first season of American Horror Story, and audiences who were first charmed by her four-season run on Spin City fell for her completely on Friday Night Lights, which wrapped up the year before.
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Panettiere, meanwhile, had been acting for the better part of two decades by the time she was cast as Juliette. She landed her first series regular role at just four years old, when she was cast as Sarah Roberts in One Life to Live. Three years on that series gave way to five years as the fiery Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light — a predecessor for Juliette if there ever was one in Panettiere’s past credits. She also starred in Ally McBeal as Calista Flockhart’s titular character’s daughter, had a memorable arc on Malcolm in the Middle, broke out with Heroes in 2006, and starred in over two dozen films before Juliette ever came around.
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Panettiere had also worked previously with legendary actresses her senior like Jennifer Aniston, Geena Davis, and Jessica Lange, but she says her working relationship with Britton is still special.
“She’s fantastic. She’s so smart and so savvy. She plays that character so well, and she’s so likable, and I’m so unlikable in moments. But I feel like we were able to infiltrate that with portions where you can feel for [Juliette], you understand her, and see where her pain is coming from.”
Nashville is currently streaming on Netflix.
