‘Nashville’ was a TV series which was co-led by Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere. I already broke down Britton’s character, Rayna Jaymes, on the previous blog entry, so I think it’s only fair that we discuss Panettiere’s Juliette Barnes. She was first introduced as a a bubblegum country pop singer and former teen star sensation who was determined to replace Rayna as the top superstar of country music. Over time, however, she proved herself to be much more than just a blonde girl with a bubblegum personality who sang songs like ‘I’m A Girl’. She was even able to co-exist with Rayna in the music industry and be viewed as her equal.
It was a long road for Juliette to get there, however. When we’re first introduced to her, we see that she was a very unlikeable person. The only people she was surrounded by were the people she paid to work for her. Most notably, the most important person in her life was Glenn Goodman, her manager who’s worked for her she was 14 years old. He was her father figure – something she lacked all her life. Juliette’s life wasn’t ideal. Her mother Jolene, was a junkie and wasn’t much a present figure in her life; not like a loving mother should be when raising a child. Her father died when she was 4. With that said, she had a goal to leave her home life behind. She emancipated herself at the age of 16 and moved to Nashville, Tennessee. She quickly rose to become one of the biggest stars in country music.
Nevertheless, despite her great success, her talent was always questioned. But she proved them all wrong as she’d co-written songs with Deacon Claybourne, played by Charles Esten. When Rayna harshly belittled Juliette’s success in a public manner, and questioned why she was in the music industry in the first place, Deacon was quick to defend her reputation and capabilities as an artist. By most of those around her, Juliette is seen as a demanding, arrogant diva, but her persona is a shield a world of pain that she rarely lets people see. As a result, she shows a desperate desire to be loved by anyone who shows her the slightest bit of affection.
Juliette and Rayna are forced to work together despite their great disliking of one another. Juliette sees Rayna as a has-been, while Rayna sees Juliette as a talentless bimbo. The public, the fans love her. They see her as a sweet-natured, fun loving, glamorous bubble-gum country star. Privately, however, she’s deemed as a cold-hearted, demanding, spoiled character who wants to be the Queen of Country. Though she has her string of hits that had gone to number one in the charts, Juliette wants to be taken seriously. She doesn’t want to make music with her vocals automatically-tuned, and she doesn’t want to make music videos that are cheesy and clichéd. She asked to work with Deacon and co-wrote music with him, and he was the first person to recognize her capabilities as an artist, and he encourages her to go against what she’s told by her bosses in her performances. When Deacon shows Rayna the lyrics Juliette’s written, Rayna admits that she might’ve been wrong about her. They then finish a song together called ‘Wrong Song’ that goes straight to number one.
In Juliette’s personal life, we first see her be romantically involved with Deacon, but he pushed her away as he saw her as someone too young for him, and for the fact that he was very much in love with Rayna. He was still there for her as a friend, mentor, and confidant. She’s then set up by her management team to date football player Sean Butler, as they believe that it will be good press for her. She initially rejects the idea, but hesitantly accepts to at least go on one date with him. Juliette finds him sweet, especially when he reveals his intentions to remain a virgin until marriage. When she first initiates sex with him and he says no, she sees it as a rejection and gets angry. This leads to a rather hasty marriage. She realizes Sean is a genuinely good person and doesn’t want to hurt him, so she agrees to an annulment. Following their break up, she tells her that she was right about one thing – that he’d regret falling in love with her once he’d get to know her. This statement, though she understood it to be true, hurt her.
At the same time, Jolene re-enters Juliette’s life. Jolene wholeheartedly wants to be back in Juliette’s life, but Juliette doesn’t has reasons to believe otherwise. She remembers losing her irresponsible mother to drugs, resulting in Juliette having to clean up after her and often being on the receiving end of her mother’s drug fuelled violence. Despite this, she helps her mother again by paying for her rehab and eventually falls for her mother’s drug counsellor, Dante. He’s slowly, but very surely, begins to take over Juliette’s life, her finances and her career, but Juliette is so blindly in love with him, she ignores everyone. Dante flees with a sum of Juliette’s money and tries to blackmail her out of $10 million with a sex tape that he has of the two of them. Juliette refuses to give in to the blackmail and confesses her role in the tape, which garners respect. Jolene takes matters into her own hands. She murders Dante, destroys the tape, and then kills herself with a drug overdose, devastating Juliette. With everything that had happened between them, she still loved her mother, and at the time of her death, they were on the road to make right by their mother-and-daughter relationship. As tribute to her, Juliette sings ‘Nothing In This World Will Ever Break My Heart Again’, which we’ll later learn to not be entirely true.
Juliette is then introduced to her label’s new CEO Jeff Fordham, played by Oliver Hudson, as well as Layla Grant, who rose to fame after being the runner-up in a singing competition. Layla wants to take Juliette’s place. Juliette initially complains that she’s not country enough, and goes on to mock her when she says ‘y’all’. But she’s then forced to ask Layla to be her opening act for her tour that she was supposed to go on with Rayna. But following the events of Rayna’s wreck, which was caused by her not being able to stop at a stop sign due to Deacon’s drinking, which was triggered after years of staying sober, when he found out that Maddie was his biological daughter. With that, Rayna wants to cancel the remainder of the tour to spend more time with her daughters.
Juliette begins to feel threatened by Layla when Layla steals her spotlight and gets distracted. When Layla goes over her set time, she intentionally makes Juliette’s set. When Juliette figures it out, she barges in on Layla’s performance and sings with her collaborator instead. In retaliation, Layla calls the press to reveal that Juliette is the cause of the Wentworths’ divorce. Charles Wentworth is the billionaire who hired Juliette to sing at his and his wife’s anniversary party as a surprise. At the party, Juliette and Charlie sneak off to the house and sleep together. They meet up again at another event, and unbeknownst to them, Olivia, Charles’ wife, walks in on them. Juliette got a surprise visit from Olivia, who hits on her. It was then revealed that Juliette was intended to be part of their threesome. After all that fiasco, Charles decided to divorce Olivia.
With that said, Jeff goes to Layla and tells her that if she had anything to do with the leak, she’d be dropped from the label. When Juliette arrives at the next tour stop, she’s greeted by angry picketers who harass her and call her names. Her reputation takes another blow when someone edits a video of her so that it sounds like she said ‘there is no God’. She turns to Layla for help as a way to clear her name. As a result of the leak and everything that happened thereafter, venues start to drop her, leaving Jeff furious. He makes her apologize for her comment, and tells her that if she doesn’t, she’ll be dropped. Avery, Juliette’s guitar player who replaced Deacon’s position when he quit her band, tries to cheer her up and they write a song together. The two begin dating. Juliette is told to make an apology at her Grand Ole Opry ceremony, but she dislikes what is written for her to say, ignores the teleprompter and begins singing ‘Don’t Put Dirt on My Grave Just Yet’.
Just as he said he would, Jeff drops her from the label, and Juliette hides out from the media at Avery’s. Howie D, a high-powered, hit-making record producer, hears the new tweaked version of the song that she sang around the Grand Ole Opry, and wants to work with Juliette. She meets with him to record it, and Glenn, feeling sidelined, tells Juliette that he is resigning as her manager. She begs him to stay, as she tells him she doesn’t want to move away from being a country music singer and is unable to continue without him. Juliette runs into Jeff at a restaurant and he offers her a new record deal, but she turns him down. She also kicks Layla out of the tour, as well as her second collaborator.
With no label to represent her, Juliette goes to Rayna to get her to sign her to Highway 65 Records, Rayna’s newly founded record label, as a way to reconstruct her career. Rayna tells Juliette that she wants Scarlett, Deacon’s niece, to open for her on tour. After Scarlett has a meltdown on stage, Avery spends time with her, making Juliette jealous, as they once dated. Avery, in turn, assures her that she is the one that he loves. This doesn’t seem to be enough to reassure her that he loves her, so she ends up having sex with Jeff after she runs into him at a party. Jeff blackmails Juliette into signing with him by threatening to tell Avery what happened between them. Juliette tells Rayna that it was a mistake signing with her and wants out of her contract, but Rayna tells her that there’s too much at stake if she leaves. She later tells the truth and reveals to Rayna that she mistakenly slept with Jeff.
Avery senses that something is wrong, and goes to Gunner, with whom he previously had beef when he was in a relationship with Scarlett, for advice. Gunnar initially saw Juliette and Jeff together engaging in an intimate way, and made the conscious decision not to tell Avery of what he saw. As Avery senses there was something going on with Gunnar and another woman, Zoey, who also knew about Juliette’s infidelity, they confess Juliette’s secret to him. Avery breaks things off with Juliette, and although she begs him to stay, he leaves nonetheless, telling her that she never actually loved him, because when you love someone, you’d rather die than hurt them.
Juliette’s heartbreak over the breakup with Avery takes over her career. Her emotions show through when she auditions for the role of Patsy Cline in a movie. This time, her emotions worked to her favour, and she ends up getting the role. She then finds out that she’s pregnant when she gets sick frequently, and a doctor confirms it. As she schedules an abortion, she realizes that the baby isn’t Jeff’s since she’s further along than she initially assumed. She decides to keep the baby, which results in her to be unable to get through rehearsals due to morning sickness. Glenn assumes the worst in her, so he searches her house. She eventually tells him, and is about to tell Avery when she bails him out of jail, but when he tells her he wished he never met her, she decides to keep quiet. After contemplating putting the baby up for adoption, she decides to keep it and raise on her own.
Avery eventually finds out about the pregnancy. He comes to Juliette’s movie set and causes a scene, which her co-star overhears. Juliette worries the news of her pregnancy will leak when she has to film a love scene, her co-star promises to keep her secret. She later collapses after a tour performance, which forces her to cancel the tour altogether, and reveals the truth to the media when announcing the cancellation. Around the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death, Juliette has flashbacks of her childhood. At the CMAs Juliette meets Avery’s parents; his mom adores her but his father does not. When walking back to her seat, she overhears his father saying that he does not think that she and Avery will make good parents and brings up her past. Juliette is left heartbroken, as it was the same way that Sean’s parents treated her when they were married. Avery vows that they will not be like their parents. Juliette tells him that they are having a girl. Following the CMA’s Juliette asks Avery to move in with her after the baby is born for a short time. In turn, he asks her to marry him. She accepts, and they marry. Her water breaks when she’s in the midst of arguing with Rayna, and she gives birth to a girl, naming her Cadence.
Following the birth, Juliette shows signs of postpartum depression when she more focused on her career than the baby and neglects her. She denies it when a doctor is called in to verify her diagnosis. Worrying about not having a career after having a baby, she rushes to make a new album, and makes unauthorized roof top performances all across the country. Rayna encourages her to take time off, and when Glenn shows his concern, Juliette fires him. While Avery complains to Juliette about not spending time with baby, she throws a snow globe at them, and barely misses hitting them. Avery grows tired of Juliette’s behavior and leaves town with Cadence. After getting fired from Highway 65 when she performs an unauthorized performance that led to the label being fined, she joins Rayna’s former fiancé, Luke Wheeler’s Wheelin’ Dealin’ Records.
We see that a month later, Juliette hasn’t seen her daughter and hasn’t tried to contact Avery either. When he texts her, she ignores him. Nevertheless, she’s happier than ever as her movie is a hit and her new album is about to come out. While on tour with Luke, however, she breaks down in tears and calls Rayna for help. Despite dropping her from her label, Rayna flies out to Los Angeles to see her, but Juliette only yells at her. Juliette goes back to Nashville and reconnects with Avery and Cadence. They go to her pre-album party but it turns out she did all that just for publicity. Without telling Avery, Juliette leaves town and leaves her phone at home. On her jet, Jeff gives her a new phone, confirming that no one has the number to it. Once away from Nashville, she parties, drinks, and has a doctor prescribe her medication. When Avery asks Juliette’s employee to help taking care of Candace, paparazzi takes pictures of the three of them together. The tabloids make up headlines, insinuating that Avery is cheating. Juliette believes this, and in rage, calls her a ‘gold digging backstabbing whore’.
Candace gets sick with a 104° fever and is rushed to the hospital. Avery attempts to get a hold of Juliette, but she’s nowhere to be found. Drunk and medicated, Juliette tells her assistant to hang up, without learning that the baby is in hospital. When she does find out of her hospitalization, she rushes to fly out to her, but before she has a chance to get on the plane she runs into Avery. He tells her that he wants a divorce and full custody of Cadence. She agrees, but is obviously saddened by it.
While in a haze, Juliette attacks a fan. Jeff says he can spin the story around to make the public favourite Juliette. They make the fan say that she had been stalking Juliette and finally went too far. Distraught of her life’s consequences, Juliette mixes pills with alcohol again, texts Avery that she is sorry and goes to the hotel roof to kill herself. Jeff sees her stumbling on the rooftop of the building and rushes to her. Just as she’s about to jump, Jeff saves her, but in the momentum of pushing her back to safety, he falls off the ledge and dies. The following morning, she wakes up at the police station, having no memory of what had happened the previous night. Thinking Jeff committed suicide, she tells her version of the story to reporters. Luke’s son, Colt, tells his father that he witnessed what had actually happened. When Luke tells Juliette this, she denies it and says she was in her room at the time of Jeff’s fall. As she’s about to go on stage, however, she remembers what happened to Jeff, and goes back to her dressing room in panic. She admits to Luke that she was drunk, going to kill herself, and that Jeff died while saving her. That night, Juliette willingly enters rehab.
As part of her revenge scheme, Layla asks Glenn to be her manager, and Avery wants Avery to produce music for her. While in rehab, Juliette signs the divorce papers. She’s eventually allowed to go home, and when she does, she makes a conscious effort to be a better person. She’s then offered a role in a Steven Spielberg movie, she happily accepts, but finds out that filming will take place in Prague for two weeks. With that new information, she quits during the press conference so that she can spend more time with Cadence. Not trusting Juliette, Avery gives her limited access to their daughter. When Layla finds out that Juliette is back in town, she asks Avery to be her musical director as she’s about to hit the road opening up for Luke. Juliette gets jealous when she sees them rehearsing together. She then finds out she was nominated for an Academy Award. After going to the premiere of her movie, she starts a fling with her co-star – the one that kept his promise to keep quiet about her pregnancy. Once the Oscar ceremony is about to happen Juliette grows tired of not seeing Candace. Juliette tells Glenn the truth about Jeff’s death. Layla leaks the information and Jeff’s sister sues Juliette for wrongful death. Juliette and Glenn work out that Layla was the one who leaked it. Layla tries to stop Avery from seeing Juliette on Oscar night, but he does not want to break his promise of allowing Juliette to see Candace. Layla then tells Jeff’s sister to call Colt as he witnessed the events of Jeff’s death. Jeff’s sister asks for three million dollars to back down. Juliette makes her lawyers pay it, confesses everything to the press, and skips the Oscars. Avery confronts Layla about lying, and realizing the extent of her manipulation, dumps her and calls her crazy. Avery goes to the airport to meet Juliette, but is instead told that Juliette’s plane sent out a distress signal 90 miles away from Nashville and is missing.
Juliette’s plane crashes, and she’s the only survivor. She spends the next while recovering from her injuries, including her in ability to walk. She also suffers from severe survivor’s guilt. When she’s finally released from the hospital, Avery is permitted to take her home in a wheelchair. Juliette quickly becomes extremely frustrated at her inability to care for Cadence as much as she wants to, and gets angry at her physiotherapist for not regaining the use of her legs. When she tracks the woman who saved her life, she shows her gratitude through expensive gifts, which leaves the woman confused. Nevertheless, Juliette connects with her on a deeper level, and starts believing in God more. When Luke sells Wheelin’ Dealin’ Records to Rayna, Juliette is signed to Highway 65, and with Rayna’s approval, begins recording a gospel album due to her newfound faith.
While Juliette is at the hospital to get a prognosis on her legs, her doctor, she visits Rayna, who’s at the same hospital following a car accident. Rayna tells Juliette how proud she is and remarks on how much she has changed since the two of them first met. While at the meeting with her doctor, who gives her the clear, doctor finds out Rayna has entered a critical condition and is now in the ICU. Juliette and Avery rush to Rayna’s side, with Juliette being able to walk on her own without aid. They stay for a while and provide support to Deacon, Maddie, and Daphne, but return home before Rayna passes away. Juliette is devastated. Just as she has with Glenn, she saw Rayna as her parental figure since her mother’s death.
Glenn arranges for Juliette to perform at Rayna’s tribute concert, but she doesn’t feel right doing so, and invites Maddie to perform on stage instead. Juliette attempts to regain her career and fame, but radio only wants to work with Maddie. Her new Christian album is released and flops, so she decides to make another pop-country hit album. A songwriter gives her a song he wrote with the intention for it to be given to Maddie, but she likes it so much that she records it herself. Deacon, who took over Highway 65 as co-owner following Rayna’s death, finds out about this and fires her from the label. Juliette drops out of the American Music Award she is nominated for and tells the world what she did.
Juliette is given a second chance at Highway 65, and is planning her new album launch which will kick off with a performance. Audience members aren’t happy with her appearance and start holding up signs and booing her at her kickoff. She explains that if they really knew her, they would not like her and walks off stage. After giving it much thought, Juliette decides to make her struggle with postpartum depression public. She goes on radio and announces that she struggles with depression and is cancelling her tour/album. She then joins a cult. She says that she wants to be a new person, and it’s eventually revealed that, when Juliette was 9, Jolene used Juliette to sell her as a child prostitute. This is the potential reason behind Juliette’s dissociation because she doesn’t remember the incident until her memory is prompted by the cult leader. Her disengagement from the event results in her pushing Avery away. Avery tries to get her to return but she refuses, but as she comes to the realization as to what the cult is and realizes that she’s pregnant again, she does come home. She quits the music business and moves to a farm to raise Cadence, but promises Avery she’s not running away. Avery learns of her pregnancy and realizes he wants to be with her. He comes to her to the farm where he sees her, visibly pregnant, playing with their daughter.
In my previous blog entry on Rayna’s journey on the show, I emphasized that the series had overstayed its welcome and should’ve ended at season 4. I stand by that statement, and wholeheartedly so. Season 4 ended with Juliette having been involved in a plane crash, and we, the viewers didn’t know whether she survived or not. And I personally would’ve much rather not known than see what had happened thereafter. Juliette’s initial premise at the start of the show was that she aimed to be taken seriously while going through her struggles. This continued on through the 4 seasons of the show, and it was great. The storylines were actually believable, and a lot of the female fans could relate to a lot of them. I know I did. Panettiere’s performance was superb. She wanted to join the show and portray Juliette specifically because a lot of what had happened to Juliette happened to her in the music industry.
I would’ve much preferred for the show to have ended with not knowing whether Juliette survived or not, because even if she didn’t survive, though tragic, it would’ve been a much better end to her character arc than what ended up happening to her in the last two seasons. Nothing about her story following the plane crash made sense, especially in the events of season 6. It might’ve been believable that Juliette joined a cult, but she couldn’t have left so quickly. It just doesn’t work that way in real life. It takes years, and sometimes never, for cult survivors to leave the cult. They’re called cult survivors for a reason. And I should know, as something like this has affected my family. And why would Avery ever want to be with Juliette again after what she put him through? It’s hard for me to believe that he’d want to be involved with her romantically after everything that had happened between them. The best thing for would’ve been to co-parent with Avery and be friendly with him. She needed to start her life over; not just professionally, but personally as well. The writers were pushing for a ‘happily-ever-after’ ending for Juliette, but sometimes, a happy ending doesn’t have in involve ending up with someone you’d been with for years and then coming back to them. Just look at Scarlett’s story. Her most significant relationship was with Gunnar, but she didn’t end up with him in the end. She didn’t go back to him. Instead, she found her happiness somewhere else.
Juliette’s character was both flawed and relatable, which contributed to her ‘lovable’ aspect. She was a complex figure, a rising country star with a public image of sweetness, but underneath was a complex personality wrestling with self-destructive tendencies and a yearning for love. Her journey of growth and redemption, despite her imperfections, resonated with us, the fans. To break it down more thoughtfully:
- Public Image vs. Inner Struggles: Juliette presented a glamorous and sweet-natured persona to the public, contrasting with her demanding, spoiled, and sometimes cold-hearted nature. This duality made her relatable, as viewers understood the pressure to maintain a certain image while struggling with personal issues.
- Redemption and Growth: Juliette’s character underwent significant growth throughout the series, often making mistakes but ultimately striving to be a better person and a better mother. This journey of redemption, despite her failures, made her endearing and sympathetic.
- Relatable Struggles: Juliette’s lack of a father figure and a neglectful mother shaped her desire for love and attention, often leading her to seek it in the wrong places. This vulnerability and struggle resonated with viewers, making her relatable and easy to root for.
- Complex Character: Juliette’s character was not simply good or bad. She had flaws and made mistakes, but she also possessed a genuine desire for love, connection, and success. This complexity made her human and therefore more lovable.
- The “Bad Mother” Narrative: Despite the challenges she faced as a parent, Juliette was not just portrayed as a “bad mother” but as a woman whose struggles were influenced by societal expectations and pressures, making her sympathetic and complex.
I’d like to think that the last two seasons of ‘Nashville’, especially the sixth season, don’t exist. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Many agree with me when I say Juliette’s arc in the fifth and sixth seasons were poorly written and overly dramatic. In fact, her arc was utterly frustrating to watch. It was as though the writers were set to make her fail and they gave her a sloppy ending. Writers surely based the arc of Juliette’s life on Panettiere herself, and she admitted to believe it to be true. In an interview with The Messanger, the actress said, ‘Straight from the beginning, it was like, I’m dating a football player, [and then] Juliette dates a football player. And then they turned her into an alcoholic. Then they turned to her leaving her daughter and going to this crazy [place] in Europe, and it was very obvious…They weren’t doing their homework. They weren’t creating new storylines. They were just looking at my life and going, ‘Oh, let’s just take what she’s going through and put our little spin on it.’ And then, ta-da! It’s done and done.’’ And the fact that her character was given such a sloppy ending just tells me that no one believed in Panettiere herself; that she was always meant to fail. Period!
We need to do better by women. We need to support them. We need to show them kindness. We need to cheer on them. We need to believe them. And we need to believe IN them. I’m just glad to see Panettiere thriving in her career and life again after all that she’d been through. She’s a force to be reckoned with. And yet, she’s the perfect example of a woman set out to fail by others. But why? Because she was so young? Because she was beautiful? Because she was a woman? Because she was struggling? All these questions have the same answer – Yes. That’s why we need to do better. We need to be better.
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