Sisters Lennon and Maisy Stella and Chris Carmack have been promoted to series regular status for the upcoming season of the ABC musical drama, Nashville, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
The sisters play the daughters of Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton) and have been breakout stars in their own right. Their youtube performances have amassed a huge following, and the duo’s Nashville iTunes tracks, including “Hey Ho” are some of the show’s most popular. The sisters played the Grand Ole Opry over the weekend.
Some of you may remember Lennon and Maisy from the CMT competition reality show, Duets. Their parents, The Stellas, from Canada, competed and the girls were featured prominently in their backstory.
In the finale, Maddie (Lennon) was revealed to be the daughter of Rayna and Deacon (Charles Esten) DUN DUN DUN!
Chris Carmack also has a super juicy storyline. In the final 6 episodes of Season 1, he played Will, roommate and friend to Scarlett (Clare Bowen) and Gunnar (Sam Palladino). But it was eventually revealed that he was gay and in the closet–putting up a front as a womanizer to protect his country music career.
Other Season 2 spoilers have been revealed to TV Guide by showrunners, Dee Johnson and Callie Khouri:
- Rayna and Deacon will have some happier times, but in the meantime, Deacon has to come to terms with new role as a father. “They are never going to have what you call a smooth-sailing relationship,” Khouri says. “They have that thing where two people feel like they’re meant for each other and then the universe doesn’t seem to support that. But I don’t think they ever — no matter what they’ve been through prior to the show starting — think that the other one can just be gone from their life.” Adds Johnson, “I think by the end of the season Deacon will come to understand [Rayna’s] reasoning for keeping the secret. Whether or not he’ll ever forgive her for it is another thing, but I think he’ll come to understand it more.”
- Deacon may not be the perfect father but Maddie and Deacon have one thing in common… “They can’t help but be drawn to each other in that way because they have that musical connection that runs quite deep,” Johnson says.
- Will Rayna and Juliette become friends? – “As the season begins let’s just say they’re not going to holding hands and skipping in a meadow. They’re oil and water and they always will be, but I do think they come to appreciate each other during the course of the season and maybe even unite in some fashion.”
- There will be new love interests for Juliette – “I don’t think somebody like Juliette is going to take a vow of celibacy,” Johnson says. “In many ways, that’s one form of medication for her. She is definitely going to have her love interests and maybe some high-end players, but I also think at the core she really has never been in love and maybe during the course of the season she figures out that she is.”
- Also, Juliette will continue to make mistakes – ” Growing up with that mother, she didn’t have such a great start at life and wasn’t given the best tools which with to deal with problems. So I don’t know if we’ll ever see a time when she’s not screwing up something for herself.”
- And on the Scarlett-Avery-Gunnar-Will love quadrangle? – “Ultimately Rayna is going to have a working relationship with him and it’s wrought with all the complications that the audience is aware of and Rayna is not,” Johnson says, adding that Gunnar, maybe surprisingly, will end up being a truly good friend to Will in the process. As for Avery, Khouri says, “He learned a lot of lessons and the thing about Avery that made him really attractive to Scarlett when they first got together is that he really is an artist. Getting smacked down a bit really taught him a lesson and reconnected him with the actual person that he is and took him out of the ‘who he’s going to be.’ So he’s dealing in a much more honest place.” And who, if anyone, will Scarlett ultimately choose? “Avery is her first love and there’s always a special place for one’s heart for someone like that, but Scarlett is going to be very much on her own journey this season,”
