29 Nashville
TWENTY-NINE
Nashville
“What’s a nice lass like you doing in a bar like this?” the bartender asked me.
There was only one problem. Boxing might have been hugely popular in Ireland, but I couldn’t find the fight anywhere—including on my hotel TV.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to the bartender, “but can you please turn on the fight? It’s David Haye versus Wladimir Klitschko, surely, you’ve heard of it.”
The bartender winked at me. “Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” he said. “But for you, I’ll turn it on.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, then sat back and waited for the action to start.
Wlad and I weren’t together. We’d broken up a few months after his fight against Samuel Peter, when it became clear that having a long-distance relationship spanning two continents was nearly impossible.
Wlad and I had never experienced the minutiae that rules a couple’s life together, like making dinner, paying bills, or fighting about who does the dishes.
With an ocean between us, it felt like we were living two separate lives. In most ways, we were.
In the months since the breakup, I had started dating a wide receiver named Scotty McKnight, who I’d met at a pre-Oscars party in February.
He was quarterback Mark Sanchez’s best friend, and he was muscular and handsome, with dark eyes and thick eyebrows that put Jansen’s to shame.
In a happy coincidence, right after we started dating he was drafted to Dad’s beloved NFL team, the New York Jets.
The perpetual underdog Jets had always been my favorite, too, so dating one was like satisfying a childhood crush.
I was very much in love with Scotty and his family, but I still had a strong friendship with Wlad.
Scotty understood this; he was one of the rare guys who was confident and kind enough not to feel threatened.
There was no competition between the two men—Wlad and I were just friends—but he always had a place in my heart, and what we had meant the world to me.
“Hey, look at the big fella!” the bartender said as he poured me a pint. “The big guy’s got one hell of a punch!”
“That’s my ex-boyfriend,” I said.
“No kidding?” the bartender replied. “A wee thing like you? Well, this one’s on the house.” He slid the pint of beer toward me. “I hope your big fella wins.”
Twelve rounds and two black eyes later, Wlad won by unanimous decision. My heart was full, but it ached that I wasn’t there to cheer him on in person.
After Heroes, I’d been itching to be in a new television series. In March 2012, ABC announced that I’d been cast as troubled bubblegum pop country star Juliette Barnes on a show called Nashville. The creator, writer, and director was Thelma and Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri.
I loved the script and the character of Juliette.
She was tough, sassy, devious, and someone that I could really sink my teeth into.
I also loved that I’d get to sing, a muscle I hadn’t been able to exercise much in public.
I thought the show held so much promise, but some critics thought the venture was risky.
We were a bunch of Hollywood outsiders landing in a city that had defined itself without “foreign” influences, and there was a good chance the show wouldn’t ring true.
We recorded the music separately from the scenes where I sang, and my first session in the studio was for “Telescope,” a sassy, fast-tempo song with the kind of energy that gets an audience clapping.
On the morning I was due to head to the studio, I woke up feeling like I was on the brink of death.
My palms were sweaty, my body was shaking, and my guts roiled inside my body as if I was going to throw up at any second.
I knew these symptoms all too well. Nope, I didn’t have the flu. It was my old enemy: stage fright.
“Hi, just so you know, I’m not properly trained,” I said to the producer who’d come to the studio to oversee the recording. “So you’re going to have to bear with me while I warm up. I’ll get there, I promise.”
“I know you will, Hayden,” he responded.
It didn’t help. As I started singing, my anxiety got worse.
I’m not sure how I made it through the first five minutes of recording, but when I stopped to take a break, the producer and engineers assured me I’d done an excellent job. Or maybe they were just kissing my butt. Just before I was ready to start up again, however, the producer interrupted me.
“In about ten minutes a few others from the team are coming to hear you record. Pretty much all the higher ups. Are you ready?”
My body began shaking twice as hard as it had before. “Excuse me,” I said, and I ran to the bathroom, where I almost threw up.
Somehow, I made it back into the studio without having to call 911, and I recorded the entire song in front of everyone who’d hired me and had the power to fire me. It was a miracle. A total fucking miracle.
When the pilot aired on October 12, people went nuts.
Callie and the writers had positioned the pilot so that each character encountered a central, critical drama right off the bat.
For example, “The Queen of Country Music” Rayna Jaymes—played by Connie Britton—gives up her lucrative record contract because she wouldn’t agree to be the opening act for Juliette Barnes.
At the same time, she’s blackmailed by her father into supporting her husband’s political ambitions.
It was like Guiding Light gone country and audiences lapped it up.
What also hit the audience right was Juliette.
My character wasn’t intended to be the show’s star—not even close.
That honor went to Connie, whose Rayna Jaymes was in the twilight of her career, facing a dramatic turning point thanks to yours truly.
Juliette wasn’t necessarily Rayna’s enemy, but she was the antagonist. I threatened Rayna’s career, but I was never supposed to outshine her.
That was the whole point. Women of a certain age in any entertainment sector can tell you that championing a twentysomething blond, bubblegum star over an older, more established veteran is a bad idea.
Rayna Jaymes had earned her stripes, and Juliette hadn’t. That was the way it was supposed to be.
Unfortunately, after the pilot, it was clear that my billing had gone way up. I went from maybe number five in terms of importance to nipping at Connie’s heels.
I was deeply uncomfortable with this development.
I was twenty-three years old, and Connie was in her forties with three Emmy nominations under her belt.
She was also a new mom. This should have been her time to shine, and while it was in many respects, I was terrified of making Connie worry that I—not my character—was trying to compete with her.
During the filming of the show’s promotional scenes where we both appeared onstage, we were directed to saunter toward the mic stand and—at the same time—reach to grab it.
This would insinuate our characters’ rivalry.
I always made sure to grab the mic under Connie’s hand, showing her I came in peace and with respect.
I don’t know if she noticed, but I did; I was not going to step on the toes of Rayna Jaymes or Connie Britton.
Nashville was a hit, and ABC greenlit a whole season.
It was time for me to move for the second time in my life, to a town I probably couldn’t have found on a map before I filmed the pilot.
There were Southern accents, country music, and well-manicured, grassy lawns with sensible, stately brick houses as far the eye could see.
I found a house close to the Nashville set and moved in with Allie, who was still my heart and soul and the person I told everything to.
She wasn’t going to be my “assistant” this time, but rather my best friend, support system, and social life.
Thank God Allie was there. I’d been in LA since I was sixteen, and now I was twenty-three. Nashville had come calling, and it was time to turn the page on my life in LA.