“9-1-1: Nashville” is planning something big for its first episodes on ABC, as it crafts its own lane in the beloved TV franchise from Ryan Murphy, Tim Minear and Rashad Raisani.
“NCIS: Los Angeles” star Chris O’Donnell and “Grey’s Anatomy” alum Jessica Capshaw lead the ensemble cast of the new spinoff series set in the Tennessee capital, which will once again center on the lives and work of a team of first responders. Raisani, who serves as showrunner, told TheWrap to expect all the elements that make the city stand out to be present — both the fun ones and the catastrophic.
“The first three or four episodes are going to be big, like super big, and lots of big storms coming in — both figuratively for the characters, but also literal,” he told TheWrap at ABC’s Summer Soirée last week. “We’re going to do what Nashville is known for, among many things, country music and honky-tonks and tornadoes. We’ll probably have all three in our first few episodes.”
Beyond the bombastic emergencies that “9-1-1” fans have come to expect from shows in this universe, the Nashville spinoff will put an added emphasis on the firefighters’ home lives. These storylines are led by Capshaw, who plays Blythe, the wife of O’Donnell’s fire captain Don Hart and a prominent figure in Nashville society. Blythe is part of a powerful family who wasn’t exactly thrilled when she fell in love with a first responder, a dynamic that will surely play into the drama of Season 1.
“In the most high-stakes way, Rashad has created this whole web of family drama,” Capshaw told TheWrap. “It’s all the things — love, intrigue, betrayal, trust issues — wrapped into one, outside of the fiery stuff that’s happening for the first responders. It’s definitely fire at home and at work.”
“When I first came on, the first thing I wondered was ‘What world does this woman live in that’s different from her husband?’ She comes from this world of privilege and money and resources — hopefully doing right by that system by taking her family business and creating more value — but then she has this family where her husband and her son run into burning buildings all day long,” she added, referencing son Ryan Hart (Michael Provost). “It’s a very interesting dynamic to have this woman who has her own thing going, being very independent, but then she’s completely dependent on the ways her heart works.”
Also expanding the show beyond the firehouse is LeAnn Rimes’ Dixie Bennings, mother of bad-boy firefighter Blue (Hunter McVey). And firefighter Taylor, played by Hailey Kilgore, brings the musical flare as she spends her off-time working on her singing aspirations.
Raisani, who stepped into Nashville after wrapping up Fox’s “9-1-1: Lone Star” this year, said the new series is a family drama at heart, but won’t miss a beat for fans of what has come before.
“I loved ‘Lone Star,’ I was a part of that from the beginning, and it’s something that was dear to my heart; it was very sad when it ended for me,” Raisani said. “But this is a wonderful new opportunity that I get to take a lot of the love that we poured into ‘Lone Star’ and now pour into ‘Nashville’ as it becomes its own thing. That’s been really fun to be a part of.”
“9-1-1: Nashville” premieres Oct. 9 on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu.
