'The Voice' coach Reba McEntire is more than her tater tots. She also has a 'ruthless' side

LOS ANGELES – With her “Okie” accent and a smile almost always taking over her face, it can be easy to underestimate “The Voice” Season 24 rookie coach Reba McEntire. But her fellow coaches – John Legend, Niall Horan and Gwen Stefani – should do so at their own risk.

During this season’s Battles (NBC, 8 EDT/PDT Mondays and Tuesdays), which begin Tuesday, the queen of country music, 68, will flex her coaching chops after duking it out with the other coaches to build their teams over seven Blind Auditions episodes. During a recent set visit to Battles rehearsals, it’s evident the newest coach’s contributions to the competition go beyond her “Reba-isms” and on-set tater tot cart.

Outfitted in knee-high cowboy boots, black pants and a black, gold and white sweater, McEntire is excited to connect with young up-and-coming artists and marvel at their talent. She’s also quick to empathize with them.

“I was nervous, also,” she tells one of the singers, who confesses to being anxious during the Blind Auditions.

After all, she’s still finding her legs on “The Voice” – just like they are. (Her fellow coaches have been been "very patient with me, which I'm very grateful for," she says, adding, "Everybody's getting along great.")

“My mentality at first in the Blind Auditions was to hit the button every time when I like somebody,” McEntire tells USA TODAY in an exclusive interview. “Kyra (Thompson) and Audrey (Morrissey), the producers, kept coming over. They said, 'You don't need to hit your button all the time. You've got to be selective.’”

McEntire was having none of it. “I said, 'I waited till four seconds (into the performance). I want this person! I'm going to get them.'”

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After giving feedback to two of her Battles pairings, McEntire takes a break from taping to reflect on how she can put herself in the contestants’ shoes.

“It was hard, and it was lonely. I try not to bring that up because I do want to keep on the positive, happy side,” she says of trying to break into the music industry. “But there are so many nights you're calling home and everybody's in the kitchen cooking dinner, and you go lay back down in the bed there in the Holiday Inn and cry because you're not there and you're so homesick you can't hardly stand it. But you've got your dream and you're going forward.”

The hottest topic on set during rehearsals is how to deal with performance jitters.

“The one thing that each team asked is, 'What do you do about nerves?' That's a very honest, humbling question, because everybody does have nerves,” McEntire says. “I mean, I get nervous. But it's my job to show them a way to get around it.”

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Reba uses the other coaches' advice herself

She may be a veteran in the industry who can boast of membership in the Country Music Hall of Fame, but McEntire still brings a sense of humility and excitement for making the most of her experience coaching on “The Voice.”

“I played basketball, I rodeoed, and I sang. And I'm not the best. I never will be the best,” she says. “I know that. I know my limits.”

That’s what encourages her to always challenge herself: “You always want to learn new things. That was what was so much fun sitting and listening to the other coaches, what they would say to the contestants,” she says. “It just made it very interesting to apply to my own career, because you're always looking for advice yourself.”

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Reba shows she can be ‘ruthless’ on 'The Voice'

As the season progresses, McEntire reveals that underneath the Southern charm and tater-tot bribery is a killer instinct and a bluntness that she can employ at will.

Unfortunately for her fellow coaches, she's not afraid to use her power to block them from pitching the contestants she wants for her team. As Legend put it in an earlier episode, “Most of the time (McEntire is) a benevolent queen, but every once in a while she’ll do some ruthless, cold-blooded (and) dirty things.”

Sometimes, helping young artists hone their talent means giving them tough love. When two of her pop singers bring a slightly different version of a song than they’d rehearsed to the Battles stage, McEntire doesn’t hold back in letting them know that their choice to go off-script has consequences.

In rehearsals, two of her artists are given the daunting task of singing McEntire’s “The Heart Won’t Lie.” This marks one of the few times McEntire isn’t smiling. Knowing the 1993 single that she performed with Vince Gill all too well, her ear picks up the errors in the performance.

But she approaches the feedback with tact and class, asking the country vocalist and Nashville veteran pairing whether they changed the melody in one section on purpose. The Nashville singer admits they need to familiarize themselves with the song more and “tighten it up.”

Other than understandably being critical of a performance of one of her own songs, McEntire isn’t here to nitpick. She wants to help her artists reach new heights: “That's what I'm looking for, something that will surprise them and make them feel like, ‘Man, this was really worth doing,’” she says.

“The music and melody (are) technical things that I don't have. I'm not a perfectionist, so it doesn't really bother me if it's a little flat or sharp,” she says. “If your heart and soul is in it and I felt something, we've done our job.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Reba McEntire on 'The Voice': How she's learning from fellow coaches