‘Nashville’ Sets Season 6 Premiere Date
Nashville will be back on TV at the start of the new year! The show's sixth season is scheduled to premiere on Jan. 4 on CMT.
Nashville stars Hayden Panettiere and Jonathan Jackson, who play Juliette Barnes and Avery Barkley, respectively, filmed a video posted to the TV drama's official social media accounts to announce the news. Readers can press play above to see the short clip.
Season 6 will be Nashville's first full season without Connie Britton, who played Rayna Jaymes. Britton's character died near the middle of Season 5. However, when Nashville returns, five new actors will have joined the cast: Josh Stamberg (The Affair) is set to play a recurring character named Darius, the “extremely charismatic founder of a self-actualization movement," while Nic Luken (Extinct) will play a famous pop star named Jonah Ford, and Dylan Arnold (When We Rise) is set to appear as a member of Ford's entourage and one of his longtime friends.
Also a new addition to the cast is Rainee Lyleson; she will play a backup singer who’s on her way to stardom. And Jake Etheridge, a musician who has written multiple songs featured in the show’s fifth season, will appear as Sean, a PTSD-suffering military veteran and reluctant performer.
Nashville is executive produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, as well as Steve Buchanan and Callie Khouri. The show ran for four seasons on ABC before being canceled in 2015; due to fan demand, CMT picked the show up shortly thereafter.
According to Deadline, Nashville's fifth season -- its first on CMT -- was a success. Ratings for the show's mid-season premiere were on par with its Season 5 premiere last January; that first episode on CMT was the network's most-watched original programming episode ever. Additionally, 87 percent of adults 18-49 who watched the Season 5 mid-season premiere were new viewers (viewers who had not watched CMT in the week prior).
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