Nashvilleis changing its tune.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What drew you toNashville?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ:We saw this amazing cast and characters that had the bones of great relationships.
Credit: Mark Levine/CMT; Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Its not a value judgment.
Thats not something we know how to do.
How much is the business side of the music business going to play into your stories?
HERSKOVITZ:Its there.
Its actually a fairly big story line.
For those of us who are not experts on the music business, were learning real fast.
How has the move to CMT affected things?
HERSKOVITZ:Honestly Im happy about it.
HERSKOVITZ:That is what has propelled ABC to great success in recent years.
They do great with it.
Its just not something we know how to do, thats all.
So CMT has given us tremendous creative freedom.
When you look at the show, what does it want to be?
HERSKOVITZ:It actually wants to be very intimate.
ZWICK:Nashville itself is one of the last, if not the last artist colony in America.
The intimacy of those connections was striking.
Were you excited about any characters in particular?
HERSKOVITZ:Certainly Deacon and Rayna as a relationship.
ZWICK:Avery came [to Nashville] with a very strong dream of who he wanted to be.
And I think we can talk about Juliette…
HERSKOVITZ:We can tell you shes alive.
ZWICK:I think the direction we take will be surprising.
HERSKOVITZ:She finds her life very different now from what it ever was before.
There are ripples that go out from this event that affect other people in the show.
Its a pretty great story.
How do you balance the stories with such a large cast?
ZWICK:We have narrowed our focus a little bit.
We introduce new characters but I dont think were trying to serve everyone in every episode.
That buys us the time to go deeper with each character when we do serve their story.
And there are people we love who we just didnt have room for in the narrative.
We had to make decisions about who we could tell ongoing stories about and who we couldnt.
Did you make any other major changes?
HERSKOVITZ:It was very important to us to bring in more diversity of music and of human beings.
Theres an opportunity to broaden the palette, and thats been really exciting.
