NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The new season of “Nashville” starts with traditional songs rooted in gospel and folk music rather than big production country songs.
Rayna, played by Connie Britton, finds a revelation after hearing a blind man singing “Wayfaring Stranger,” an Appalachian tune estimated to be two centuries old. And Juliette, played by Hayden Panettiere, sees an angelic vision in white singing the hymn “God Shall Wipe All Tears Away.”
Canceled by ABC after four seasons, the new season of “Nashville” on CMT, which begins Jan. 5, aims to reflect more diversity in both the music and the cast. The new season also will be available on Hulu.
In recurring roles this season: Grammy-winning banjo player and singer Rhiannon Giddens and writer-actress-producer Jen Richards, the first out transgender actor on a CMT series.
“I have spent so much of my life studying and playing music that has gone into country music: the banjo, the fiddle, the string band tunes,” said Giddens, the lead singer of the African-American string band Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Fans of contemporary country music may recognize Giddens, who sings the hymn in the first episode, from her duet with Eric Church on the Country Music Association Awards show in November.
“It is time for the real history of country music to have more of a highlight, for people to know that there were lots of black people who played the banjo, that the string band itself came from plantation culture,” said Giddens.
The changes behind the scenes include new showrunners Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who created the show “Thirtysomething” and were executive producers on “My So-Called Life.”
“We wanted to explore the diversity of music that’s going on in Nashville,” Herskovitz said. “To bring in people of different ethnicities and from different backgrounds just felt important.”
Richards, who earned an Emmy nomination for her web series, “Her Story,” said word spread quickly within the transgender acting community that “Nashville” was casting because there are so few television roles available.
“I only get called in for trans roles and then I lose those parts to men because they think I look too much like a regular girl to play a trans part,” Richards said.
Richards said being the first open transgender actor on CMT is hugely significant to changing perceptions about the transgender community.
