Tornados have hit 9-1-1: Nashville — both the actual one that’s threatening the lives of the 113 and the metaphorical one that Don (Chris O’Donnell) and his team and family have to deal with.
The series premiere saw Don introduce his son Ryan (Michael Provost), whom he shares with wife Blythe (Jessica Capshaw), to his other son, Blue (Hunter McVey), whom he had with Dixie (LeAnn Rimes) while the spouses were separated. (Blythe already knew about him.) But Dixie’s up to something, and now Blue’s joining the 113.
Below, showrunner Rashad Raisani breaks down the family drama of 9-1-1: Nashville, teases an upcoming crossover moment, and much more.
Why did you want to kick off the series with this multi-episode tornado disaster with Don and his sons right in the middle of the danger at the end of the first episode?
Rashad Raisani: Part of it was we really wanted to do something that would be very, very exciting and let people just have a very clear picture of what they could expect and what kind of emergencies they could expect in the first couple episodes. But then there also was sort of the metaphor of what we were doing, which was that Blue comes into Don’s life, and Dixie also into, not just Don’s life, but also Blythe and Ryan, all of the Hart family, these Bennings are going to come in like a tornado. And so we kind of started to work with that analogy and it sort of just went from there.
Speaking of Don and his sons, why have Don tell Ryan about Blue like that?
I think for Don, he has been struggling because he didn’t ever keep Blue a secret from his wife, but for lots of reasons he kept him a secret from his son. And once Don gets this email or this text from Blue that happened in our backstory before our pilot started, he immediately started to have incredible anxiety about, what is this going to do with my son? I’m going to have to tell Ryan, it’s going to really shatter him in a lot of ways and really make him reassess where he stands in the world. And so Don has been dreading it and because he’s a vulnerable human being, he’s been kind of putting it off like a lot of us do. And then when he runs into Blue in the world, I mean, I think he feels like, OK, there’s no more denying that this has to happen and it has to happen right now. And he almost feels like, Don, who’s not a particularly spiritual guy, he feels like, wow, this is a bolt from the universe. This is fate. So I have to just accept it and embrace it. And so that’s why he tells Ryan in that moment.
Disney/Jake Giles Netter
Yeah, it feels like that’s the way Don is just in general with everything with Blue in the premiere — him showing up at the fire station, too.
He definitely has a weakness for Blue and it’s born of a lot of guilt about keeping Blue or at least being party to keeping Blue in the shadows. And so his guilt is going to drive a lot of what’s going on to try and reestablish this family. And we’ll find out that Don himself has a lot of — his own childhood was fraught with abandonment and loss and stuff like that, which only compounds, I think, why he feels so driven to get Blue inside as fast as possible once blue shows up.
Speaking of that, when you’re looking at this guilt, but then you also looking at the fact that Ryan is clearly hurt and understandably so, but now we’re going to have Blue at the 113 with them. So how are we going to see that affecting Don and Ryan’s relationship, Ryan and Blue’s, and Don and Blue’s, when you have all these complicated emotions in play?
Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the sort of quintessential stories — I’m an older brother — is the prodigal son story about this, even though this isn’t exactly that because Blue never left. But there’s this idea of a dutiful son who has been nothing but loyal, reliable, and suddenly he starts to get displaced and he feels hurt and betrayed by it. But then part of Ryan’s growth, I think, is to start expanding what he thinks of himself and his role as, and that it’s OK to start sharing the limelight and also that there’s a real emotional and spiritual and loving reward for helping someone else along and not just being the center of attention yourself. And so I think for Ryan, his identity is going to expand about who he even sees himself as as we go forward. But definitely there’s going to be a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of frustration, and in many ways I think Ryan is the voice of the audience kind of saying, “This is crazy. You can’t be doing this.” And so we’re going to see if Dawn was right and if Blue can prove himself.
So Dixie has this plan in place and she has Blue doing something so they can get what she feels is owed to them. What can you say about what she wants exactly and what they’re exactly up to?
Well, Dixie has a lot going on. She has things that she wants that are tangible. She definitely needs, and we’ll see this need come out more as the show goes on — her voice, her greatest treasure is in great peril and she’s willing to do anything to get the surgery from the surgeon she needs to be able to make sure that her voice is protected for the rest of her career. Her greatest fear is that she ends up like Julie Andrews that she gets a surgery that isn’t right or that she can barely afford there ends up ruining her voice and she’s got nothing. So just from a tangible place, that’s what she wants, but in an emotional place, we’re going to find out that she and Don have a very complex backstory, we’re going to do an origin story for them later this season, and that she and Don’s fate have been intertwined deeply. I mean, they were each other’s first love. And so she has a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, so she does want to sabotage the family, but then she also has a lot of love for Don, even if it’s under the surface, and that’s going to come out as well and affect what her agenda is as we go forward. So she has a whole bunch of different cards she’s going to be playing.
You brought up the love. I was going to ask, does any part of her want Don back or is she all about punishing him?
Well, on a conscious level at the beginning, she’s all about punishing him, but you’re right on top of where the show ends up going, even in our first few episodes, that we’re going to see that that’s really the hurt talking for Dixie and underneath that hurt is a lot of love that’s still there.
Disney/Jake Giles Netter
What I noticed though is that Don was a likely match as Blue’s father. So can you confirm that he is actually his dad and it’s not just the strongest likelihood that’s going to lead to drama?
Well, I will say, you really got onto a word right there. Yeah, I won’t comment on it.
I also took note of Blythe’s comment that she had fun while she and Don was separated, too. So will anything be coming back to haunt them from that time and what she did then?
It’s funny you asked that. I think absolutely we will be playing that, yes.
But I do like that Don and Blythe’s relationship seems to be strong. It does seem like they never looked back after they got back together and they have no secrets. But is that the case? What can you say about how having Blue in their lives might affect that part of their relationship?
Well, it’s certainly going to put a stress test on just how strong their relationship is. And one of the things I love about their relationship and the way that both of the actors play it is that they show that you can love someone. You can be in a very healthy relationship, but yet have major — you can have your ups and downs and you can have betrayals, and you can have scars from life and continue going through them and continue coming back together in spite of it. And so I think that’s something that I love about it. And so they are going to go into some battles as we move forward. They’re going to be put to the test. So, we’ll see. Our first season really does examine just how unified they are.
They have these stressors in Dixie and Blue, but is anything else coming up that’s going to challenge them?
Oh, yes, there is, because I don’t know if you caught, there was a little moment in the pilot where he talks about her father and how her father got in her ear. And so he will be another major character and another stress point on their relationship for sure. [He’s played by] an amazing, incredible actor who I’ve loved for many years named Tim Matheson.
What are his interactions like with Ryan and with Blue?
Well, he doesn’t exactly know about Blue to begin with, and that’s going to be a major issue. And then with Ryan, he loves his grandson, but the problem is he’s had a lot of issues with his son-in-law over the years, and so some of that tension has affected his relationship with Ryan. Edward loves Ryan, but Ryan sometimes it keeps him a little bit at arm’s length sometimes because he doesn’t like the way that Edward always interacts with his father.
What can you say about what we’ll see from the Blythe and Dixie rivalry and how often is Don going to get caught in the middle?
That’s a great question. He is going to be caught in the middle multiple times for multiple reasons. And we’re about to go into prep on our 13th episode, so he’s already been caught in the middle, I think, two or three times. And they have all kinds of — one of the things we’ve tried to do is to keep it from just being, I mean, you haven’t even seen them interact yet because it doesn’t happen in the pilot, but they have different kinds of conflicts with each other. It’s not always the same, it’s not just a cat fight or something. There’s a lot of emotional history, as I was saying before, that Dixie shares with Don that Blythe doesn’t, and vice versa. There’s things that Blythe means to Don that Dixie could never provide. So they’re going to have lots of different battles with lots of different nuances. And in each bout there’s often a different winner, but they definitely are. I think one of the things that is most special about the show is those two, LeAnn and Jessica, and the chemistry that they have together.
Are there going to be any crossovers with 9-1-1 or might we see any Lone Star characters?
Oh, boy, I sure would love it. There is already one tiny little crossover moment that’s coming up very soon in the third episode. And I sure would love to get these Lone Star characters and also the OG characters out to Nashville. It’s a little bit more of a puzzle now than it used to be because when we were on Lone Star and 9-1-1, we could do crossovers because we’re all in the same studio in the same lot, we were all in L.A. Now shooting in Nashville to try and get our 9-1-1 friends over there, it means they have to leave their own show. And so it’s a little bit more of a challenge during our season, but we’re going to figure out a way to get it done as soon as we can. And as far as the Lone Star characters, that would give me such great joy because that was my sole show, so I would love it.
We hear that Ryan’s having problems in his marriage. What are the issues there?
Well, the issues are going to be explored in great detail starting in Episode 2 and 3. And I think a lot of it comes down to the sacrifices that first responders have to make. And unfortunately, the divorce rates for first responders are very high, and it’s because of the extreme hours, the extreme trauma, the erratic nature, the emotional baggage. And so all of those things have factored greatly into Ryan’s marriage being on the brink
In the trailer, there’s a shot of a redacted file. And we also see Blythe telling Don there’s some things about him he’s not aware of. Is she talking about Blue? And is that tied to that file?
Yes. Blythe is no fool and she doesn’t know, I mean, she is a trust but verify kind of person. And so her family is very powerful. Like I said, Tim Matheson is the patriarch and their family is used to scandals and preventing scandals and all kinds of things. So when Blue just shows up out of the blue, Blythe’s hackles go up and she is going to start digging into not just Dixie, but Blue also, and find out that he has some skeletons in the closet that are very troubling and that she needs to get to the bottom of, to find out exactly what this guy’s all about.
What are some of the romantic relationships or possible romantic relationships we should be looking out for?
Well, I think the heartbeat relationships that are coming up is — Blue will have a romance with one of our firefighters that will start to, pardon the pun, but they will start to have sparks as it goes. It’s hinted at in the pilot, and we just keep building on it throughout the first season. … It’s Taylor [Hailey Kilgore]. And if you look at her reaction right to him the first time, they have this really adorable energy and they just have the best chemistry. And so we’ve been really trying to take our time with it, but also to allow them to both be — they’re so young and there’s so much about them that is so innocent. So to allow their kind of innocent love to happen kind of in an inappropriate place, the workplace, particularly with firefighters, it can be complicated. So I think that’s a focal point. And then I know it may not be the sexiest thing sometimes, but we want our married couples to be as romantic and as loving as possible. And we may also see Cammie [Kimberly Williams Paisley] start to explore her romantic side as well.
9-1-1: Nashville, Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC