9-1-1: Nashville viewers have been clinging to LeAnn Rimes and Jessica Capshaw‘s onscreen chemistry — and the country singer isn’t ruling out a possible onscreen romance between Dixie and Blythe.
“That [idea] is my favorite. Jessica and I laugh so much about that,” Rimes, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly before 9-1-1: Nashville‘s return on Thursday, February 26. “People love us together, which is awesome. We have so much fun together.”
Rimes has been having a blast sharing the screen with Capshaw, 49.
“She plays my nemesis and then all of a sudden — as soon as they call ‘cut’ — we’re talking about family and normal girl stuff. It’s interesting, because it takes a certain type of intimacy to be able to play a nemesis, and we just hit it off immediately,” she recalled. “I think people see that — and they do want [Chris O’Donnell’s] Don out of the way.”
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She continued: “Who knows where the story line will go? Trust me, because of that, there’s been things thrown around that we’re like, ‘OK, we might just go there.’ You never know.”
Set in the Tennessee capital, 9-1-1: Nashville follows the lives of emergency responders, including firefighters and paramedics, as they face life-threatening situations. The obstacles aren’t just in their work lives but outside of the job as well.
At the center of the show is O’Donnell’s Don, who runs a team of emergency responders with his son, Ryan (Michael Provost), when he crosses paths with Blue (Hunter McVey) a.k.a. his secret son with Dixie (Rimes), who has ulterior motives when convincing him to join the Hart family. Don’s wife, Blythe (Capshaw), meanwhile, quickly picks up on Dixie’s plan.
Despite Dixie often making choices for self-preservation, viewers have found it difficult not to root for her. They will likely continue to find reasons to love Dixie after Thursday’s episode — which features flashbacks of Dixie, Don and Blythe.
“Viewers might be a little Team Dixie after this episode. You get to see Noa [Bess Solomon] — who plays the younger version of Dixie — and she’s wonderful in this episode. She is so magnetic on screen. She really captured the heart of young Dixie,” Rimes teased. “You get to see Dixie before the world got to her and molded her into what she is now.”
Rimes broke down the work that went into developing Dixie, adding, “I always look underneath all the manipulation — which to me is just a survival mechanism of being in this business. She is feeling slighted being a single mom where she had to figure out a way to survive.”
She continued: “Through the eyes of young Dixie, you get to see that sweet piece of her that’s still clearly there. You really get to see that through her love for her son. But she’s turned into quite the manipulator. Underneath it all, there’s still some softness there. People will kind of fall in love with her.”
Thursday’s episode is also meaningful for Rimes because it features her new song, “Wild Things Run,” which she created for the show.
“I’ve been living this song for a while, but it actually happened very fast. TV moves quickly, so I got the script, but the very, very rough draft of the montage of the song was going to be put behind on the show,” she recalled. “From that moment to releasing it now has only been a few weeks time. In the grand scheme of things, I live with songs for months before it gets released. So, it feels great. I’m so happy it’s out in the world. I’m so happy people get to see the episode with the song in it. It was great to be able to create something for Dixie.”
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Rimes referred to the experience as a “bit stressful,” adding, “It keeps you on your toes. I feel like Don and Dixie’s relationship has been these two wild souls running towards each other and then away from each other. Then the universe always is bringing them back together. So we wrote it kind of from that perspective.”
She added: “It is also a song that Dixie gets discovered by. So it has to feel like a hit song, which usually when I write, I don’t think about that. … It was a great way to stretch my brain as a writer. Actually, it has given me some interesting thoughts about how to go about writing a new record from this perspective, and I love the way that the song is so cinematic. It sparked something in me for moving forward into writing my next record. It’s a good moment in time that’s just sparking a lot of things in me.”
Rimes has also found herself invigorated by her role on the show.
“I’ve never been a regular on a series. It was juggling all the things of life along with touring and then something that I don’t do normally. It’s not second nature to me. Every time I walked on set, I was learning, and it was great having [husband] Eddie [Cibrian] with me sometimes, because I’m like, ‘Explain to me, what are they talking about? What are these words that I’ve never heard before because I haven’t been on set in forever?’” she told Us. “Every episode was something new. I would get the scripts, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, my God, can I pull this off? Then you just dive in and do it. I’ve learned a lot from the show.”
9-1-1: Nashville airs on ABC Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Hulu.
