9-1-1: Nashville already sounds like it is going to be a star-studded series with LeAnn Rimes and Kimberly Williams-Paisley joining the show.
Variety confirmed on Thursday, May 8, that Rimes and Williams-Paisley have been cast in mystery roles in the show’s first season. They join previously announced cast members Chris O’Donnell and Jessica Capshaw in the 9-1-1 spinoff, which is set to start filming later this summer.
Fans were originally introduced to the 9-1-1 universe when the OG series premiered on Fox in 2018. It followed the professional and personal lives of Los Angeles first responders with stars Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Aisha Hinds, Oliver Stark, Connie Britton and Kenneth Choi. Fox canceled the series in 2023, which allowed ABC to swoop in and renew the show that is currently still airing on the network.
9-1-1 expanded with 9-1-1: Lone Star, which followed a New York firefighter (played by Rob Lowe) who relocated to Texas while trying to balance his job alongside his personal issues. Liv Tyler, Ronen Rubinstein, Rafael L. Silva, Sierra McClain, Jim Parrack, Natacha Karam, Brian Michael Smith, Julian Works and Gina Torres made up the rest of the cast.
By 2023, 9-1-1: Lone Star was renewed for its fifth and final season after remaining on Fox. Cocreators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear, meanwhile, shifted their focus to a new location that would introduce another spinoff — in Nashville.
“Tim Minear and I are working on a new spinoff that we’re actually writing, and that we hope to get on the air next fall. Sadly, we all love Lone Star, but the financials just didn’t work,” Murphy told Variety in October 2024. “It’s a Disney company that was on a Fox network, and it just was never going to work. And we had a long run of it.”
He continued: “So now we’re going to launch a new show in a new city that I can’t name, but it’s fun. And 9-1-1 moved to ABC and suddenly became, I think, the biggest show on Thursday night. They obviously have an appetite for that, so we’re going to give them another one that I really love.”
Minear was previously asked whether 9-1-1: Lone Star alums will make cameos on the Nashville spinoff, to which he told TV Line in November 2024, “I have no current plans for that. But it’s not impossible!”
Earlier this year, O’Donnell was announced as Captain Don Sharpe a.k.a “a rugged fire captain and rodeo rider who runs Nashville’s busiest firehouse with his beloved son.” According to the official character breakdown, Don is “devoted husband and family man but he has his secrets.”
