Hailey Kilgore, 9-1-1: Nashville
Disney/Jake Giles Netter
[Warning: The following contains spoilers from 9-1-1: Nashville Season 1, Episode 6, “Good Southern Manors.” Read at your own risk!]
9-1-1: Nashville has certainly not been shy about establishing ties with its predecessors in the hit first-responder franchise. Through its first six episodes, the new, soapy spinoff has found creative ways for the first responders in Music City to briefly interact with the emergency dispatchers in Los Angeles (on the original 9-1-1) and even one of the firefighters in Austin (the recently cancelled 9-1-1: Lone Star).
With an eye to further strengthening the connections within that TV universe, Nashville co-creator and showrunner Rashad Raisani, who has also worked as a writer and an executive producer on the first two 9-1-1 shows, chose to bring back a storyline that eagle-eyed fans of the mothership series may have recognized. By the end of Thursday’s fall finale, the first-responders in Nashville found their system being attacked and ransomed by the same hackers who wreaked havoc on Los Angeles at the start of the original 9-1-1’s fifth season.
For Raisani, the inspiration for the cyberattack storyline initially came from a personal place. “My dad was a doctor, and his hospital was ransomed. Hackers from somewhere in central Europe or whatever took it over, and they wouldn’t allow any drugs, medications, medical records, anything,” he told TV Guide. The hackers on 9-1-1 were ultimately never apprehended, “so I just thought, ‘Well, let’s make virtue of the fact that they never got caught, and let’s have it be the same people. But now they’ve learned even more, and they’re even more aggressive towards the city [of Nashville].'”
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While he did not confirm whether this cyberattack could lead to further “cross-pollination” between the 9-1-1 shows airing back-to-back on ABC, Raisani confirmed that a “more muscular crossover” will be coming in the second half of the season, “the scope of which will definitely involve some characters from the mothership coming [to Nashville] in person.”
Elsewhere in the episode, the 113 responded to a fire at the brewery owned by Edward Raleigh (Tim Matheson), the old-fashioned father of Blythe Hart (Jessica Capshaw) and father-in-law of Capt. Don Hart (Chris O’Donnell) and dispatcher Cammie Raleigh (Kimberly Williams-Paisley). After rashly ordering his team to destroy barrels of Edward’s most expensive whiskey in order to save the property from a massive explosion, Don, who has always had a difficult relationship with Edward, is asked to make peace with his father-in-law — if only to convince him to make a generous donation to stop Nashville’s emergency services from laying off employees amid widespread budget cuts.
At the insistence of Blythe, Edward agrees to address the financial shortfall, under the condition that Blue (Hunter McVey), Don’s son with his ex Dixie (LeAnn Rimes), is fired for not going through the traditional fire academy. Don, not wanting to let go of the son he just met, decides to come back with a counter-offer that sounds an awful lot like blackmail. After doing some investigating of his own, Don discovered that Edward had been stealing water from the city — which explains why the firefighters could barely find any usable water to put out the flames — and was engaging in some shady business practices. Needless to say, Edward does not take kindly to threats, and he has now waged war against his son-in-law.
Meanwhile, Cammie felt the immediate squeeze of the expected budget cuts, as her dispatch center was subject to the suffocating pressure of an outside agency that was brought in to address “inefficiencies.” By the end of the hour, viewers were finally given a window into Cammie’s decision to leave her former job as a music executive to become a 9-1-1 dispatcher. (It all ties back to her late husband, who was also Blythe’s older brother.)
Below, Raisani unpacks the most compelling familial relationships in his Nashville spinoff, teases what he has planned for supporting characters Taylor (Hailey Kilgore) and Roxie (Juani Feliz), and reveals more about what could be the first major 9-1-1 crossover since early 2021.
Chris O’Donnell recently told me that Don has a really contentious relationship with his father-in-law Edward, who has never really approved of working-class Don marrying into the wealthy Raleigh family, and we finally get to see them interact in Episode 6. Edward, at one point, says to Don, “Underneath that shiny smile and that ‘aw shucks’ charm, you are petty and you are proud.” Why do you think there is still so much animosity between Don and Edward?
Rashad Raisani: It may be controversial to say, but the most important thing to me is that Edward was kind of right about some of his concerns. He’s not just a stereotypical rich, angry dad who’s protecting his daughter; he sees something in Don that he does not like when Don smashes that glass [during their argument, where Blythe tried to act as a mediator], and Edward’s like, “That’s the real Donald Hart.”
From the first day I met Chris, I thought, “There’s something underneath your skin. [Laughs.] I think there’s something there.” I think we want to go there with Don and show that he is not as squeaky clean as he presents. I think that’s what Edward has always had his finger on. Even though Edward presents as the villain or the antagonist in these first couple of episodes, he’s usually not completely wrong when he says stuff. If we get into the back half of our season, we’re going to do an origin story for Don, Dixie, and Blythe and that love triangle, and you’ll see what Edward was talking about. It’s in there.
Don, Blythe, and Dixie are the main love triangle of this show, but we’ve already reached a point where you have to wonder just how many more times the ladies can have the same argument or disagreement over Don before it gets stale. How are you trying to find new ways to mine conflict between them?
Raisani: Part of what we are trying to do is have them hit new levels of understanding and then have betrayals upon betrayals that are even worse than they thought were possible. So I think we know that we can’t just have them keep bumping into each other and making snide remarks. It’s got to go deeper and be more human than that. So now that you know who these people are — who Dixie is, who Blythe is — and what they’re about, we can start to put them into more uncomfortable positions where they’re kind of stuck together in ways, and then they have to kind of live together. Blue is going to become a firefighter in this family, and Dixie’s going to be around, and Blythe has to try and take the high road with that. We’ll see how that goes for her when she does that, and everybody’s full of more tricks, as we will see. So, yeah, we definitely plan to go deeper on that relationship and to hopefully surprise people in new ways.
You’ve said that 9-1-1: Nashville feels like a soapy family drama in the vein of Dynasty, but set in the 9-1-1 universe. Will there ever be a physical cat fight à la Dynasty between Blythe and Dixie?
Raisani: [Smiles.] Yeah, I think that there will be a real one.
Hunter McVey, 9-1-1: Nashville
Disney/Jake Giles Netter
So much of the first five episodes were about Blue integrating into the Hart family and making peace with the fact that he now has three parents in his life. How does he feel about that trio of adults at this point in the show’s run? What is his inner struggle now that the secrets have been revealed about his paternity?
Raisani: Blue, more than anything, just wants a stable family. He wants it so bad. So I think that he’ll put up with some bad behavior or some questionable decisions to be able to have that thing he wants. But what he’s going to struggle with is that when people step out and behave badly, you can’t have that thing you want, even if you want it really bad. So each of those characters is going to become an obstacle for Blue. None of them are innocent, really, in my mind. There’s going to be different moments where the three of them all step out — and [that storyline’s] not done.
There’s going to be more things to come, but I think Blue’s journey is that he’s got to stop giving other people so much power to let him be happy or feel belonging, which is what he’s been giving to these adults. Blue’s going to have to come to terms with [the fact that], “You’re a grown man now. You’ve got to start making some of your own decisions, whether that means disappointing your mom or your dad, and you need to find your own feet as a person.” But that said, he still really wants a family. He’s a very forgiving and a very patient soul, but they will put that to the test.
Blythe has seemingly made her peace with Blue because she’s known about his existence for decades, but she can’t help but shake this nagging feeling that Don has another son and this history that does not include her. How does she really feel about Blue at this point? Has she fully accepted him into her family? Is she still waiting for the other shoe to drop with him?
Raisani: In her conscious mind, she completely accepts Blue and can see that he has absolutely no responsibility or fault for being born and causing friction in her own marriage. So she can understand that on an intellectual, human level. But I think that underneath that, [she doesn’t like] what Blue represents, which is Dixie’s infiltration and Dixie’s hooks and Dixie’s influence. In the same way that I was saying that I wanted Edward to kind of be right about Don, I also think Dixie usually is often telling the truth and is an actual romantic and spiritual threat to Don because of some backstory that we’re going to get into. So I think that when Blythe looks at Blue, even though she can see that he’s his own person and she can accept him, she also knows that he represents the penetration into her world of Dixie and the threat of Dixie every time he’s there. So I think she has a lot of complicated feelings that are uncomfortable, even to her.
Episode 6 finally offers a window into Cammie’s backstory. She reveals that, after tragically losing her husband, who choked to death, while out to dinner one evening, she decided to use his estate to revamp the 9-1-1 dispatch center in Nashville. Did you always know that she was going to have this tragic backstory, and how are you planning to further develop that character in the back half of the season?
Raisani: The answer is no. What happened was the director [and executive producer] Brad Buecker and I, when we were out in Nashville — the very, very, very first trip scouting, when we just had a pilot story, no locations, no actors, nothing — we were in a restaurant at this nightclub-y restaurant where they had live music and everything. And while we were having dinner, suddenly, the people behind us started screaming, “Turn the lights on! Stop playing music.” Everybody thought it was a drunk in the place, like, “Shut up.” They were like, “Please, for the love of God, put the lights on.” We turned around, and a woman had died at her table. She choked out, and her husband just watched. He was so stunned. He didn’t know how to do the Heimlich, and she was gone just like that, and it just was so stunning to us.
So as we were thinking about Cammie, we always knew we wanted her to have a background in Nashville’s music scene. But the question was always, “Well, then, what happened? Why is she now a dispatcher?” And then when that moment happened, it was like, “Whoa. [Cammie and her husband] were having a great dinner celebrating, and then all of a sudden, her whole life changed.” Her husband was from Blythe’s family, so we had this enormous wealth. The other part of it is that when she called 9-1-1, as she mentions in the episode you just watched, she got a busy signal. And that was because in our American infrastructure, so many of our call centers are overwhelmed, understaffed, under-technologized. So she decided in this guy’s honor that she was going to pump a lot of money and try to make his death mean something.
In terms of where she’s going this season, she’s wonderful, but she’s also very stuck in the past. She’s functioning, but she still leaves her dead husband voicemails. She has a lot of growing to do to emerge and to live her life again. So I think that’s what the second half of our season is going to really start that journey for her.
Through the first six episodes of Nashville, there have already been a bunch of little callbacks to the original 9-1-1 and Lone Star, in terms of emergencies. At this point, it feels like there are more emergencies that you guys have done than you haven’t.
Raisani: Fair enough. [Laughs.]
The fall finale ends with all of Nashville emergency services being caught in a cyberattack, which has happened on the original 9-1-1 before. Why did you want to end the first part of the season that way?
Raisani: For me, the real thing was the massive cyberattack. A big part of it was, my dad was a doctor and his hospital was ransomed. Hackers from somewhere in central Europe or whatever took it over, and they wouldn’t allow any drugs, medications, medical records, anything. So that was part of what led to the 9-1-1 attack on the [original] 9-1-1 series.
For me, the thing that was always the kind of money left on the table on the 9-1-1 side was that those hackers were never caught. And for me, in real life, if you get paid, you keep going; you can make more money. So I just thought, “Well, let’s make virtue of the fact that they never got caught, and let’s have it be the same people. But now they’ve learned even more, and they’re even more aggressive towards the city.” Because in the original 9-1-1, it set up the episode, but then it kind of got away from that because [Angela Bassett‘s] Athena was going after Jeffrey, I think his name was, but it became a whole other thing. But this one, I was like, “Let’s just do a more robust, direct, ‘Give me money or I’ll hurt you’ kind of story,” and just let that play out.
Chris O’Donnell, 9-1-1 Nashville
Disney/Jake Giles Netter
There have been a couple little crossovers in these first six episodes of Nashville — first with Cammie helping to connect Athena, Hen (Aisha Hinds), and the rest of the spacegoers to the L.A. call center, and then with the mention of Firefox (the online username of Natacha Karam‘s Marjan Marwani) sharing a video of Blue’s heroic rescue. What are the chances of an in-person crossover in 2026?
Raisani: The chances are really good. We’re in the works on a more muscular crossover, the scope of which will definitely involve some characters from the mothership coming in person.
How many?
Raisani: We’re still figuring out literally, as of today, if it’s going to be a couple or if it’s going to be many, and if it’s going to be more of a personal adventure or a professional one. But we will do a more true crossover this season in the back half.
Viewers have learned a lot about the Hart, Raleigh, and Bennings families in these first six episodes, but how are you planning to further develop the personal lives of the supporting characters going forward?
Raisani: With Taylor, she is this singer who was one of our entry points into the Nashville music scene. So we’re going to see that part of her identity start to emerge and to see some conflict happening where, as her music career starts to take off, how that puts her identity as a firefighter on the line. We’re also going to get into her romantic life, which may just involve another character on the show. [Writer’s note: Raisani has confirmed in other interviews that Taylor will take an interest in Blue.]
And as far as Roxie goes, she is a lesbian, but she has a complicated emotional backstory, which we hint at in our fifth episode. But we’re going to see her start to meet somebody and then have to deal with the vulnerability. Something that Roxy’s very uncomfortable with is commitment, vulnerability — all the things that a relationship entails — and we’ll see her have to grapple with it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch that adventure for her.
Co-creator Tim Minear reversed a precedent that he had set in previous seasons of the original 9-1-1 and Lone Star by killing off Bobby Nash (Peter Krause) earlier this year. Don got struck by lightning at the end of Episode 2, but it was pretty clear that he was going to survive. Similarly, at the end of the fall finale, Blythe falls off her horse and is last seen bloodied and passed out on the ground alone. It seems too early to even entertain the thought of killing off a main character, but how concerned should audiences be about you killing off a member of your ensemble after the bold, yet controversial, choice to kill off Bobby?
Raisani: I agree that it was bold. [Laughs.] Also, it’s funny because we had written the Don [being struck by lightning] thing before the Bobby thing happened, so I thought, “Oh great. People are going to be so mad.” But that was written first! But the oblique way I’ll answer that is, if you look at the finale of Lone Star, we could have killed a lot of people. And to me, in that case, I got a lot of heat and pressure to kill all the different characters people wanted me to kill off. [People had] different agendas. And I was like, “You know what? It’s sad enough that [the show] has to end. Why should we add a punch to the gut on the way out?”
For this show, I want people to believe our stakes, and I want people to feel the adrenaline and the stakes of what they’re going through. So I don’t want to say, “Well, don’t worry. Absolutely nothing will ever happen.” But on the other side of that, I want people to feel like, “OK, come in, get to know [and] enjoy being around these [characters].”
I hope this makes you have a little bit better of a Thursday night or a Tuesday morning — whenever you watch this show — and you feel a bit of belonging and comfort with these people. That’s ultimately why we do this show. I want people to feel like they belong somewhere, even if it’s in a TV show, and that the fifth member of our firehouse is the person watching it, and I want them to forge relationships with these characters that feel like family, because that will keep them hopefully watching the show. So that’s my roundabout way of answering your question. [Laughs.]
9-1-1: Nashville will return on January 8. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu.