'Nashville' Stars Charles Esten and Hayden Panettiere Talk Juliette's Recovery and Deacon's Sex Scenes

Last week’s return of Nashville revealed many things, including that Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) is partially paralyzed after the plane crash (there’s hope for her to walk again someday because of movement in a toe), and that Deacon (Charles Esten) and Rayna (Connie Britton) will be making a concept album together that tells the tale of their storied relationship.

Esten and Panettiere shared a few more details during a recent visit to Yahoo TV.

Panettiere told us she had no idea how Juliette would begin Season 5 — assuming there’d be a Season 5 — when she shot last May’s finale. Even after producers decided not to use the alternate “happy ending” that was filmed (“I arrive at the airport and Avery’s standing there with Cadence, the violins play, and I run into his arms,” Panettiere remembers), she still didn’t know Juliette would be in a wheelchair.

Related: ‘Nashville’ Season 5 Premiere Recap: Back in Business

How much will the experience of the crash and the road to recovery change Juliette now? “The direction she chooses to go in, I was shocked,” Panettiere says. “And I think the audience will be, too. It opens a door for her, and she discovers this part of herself that is completely undiscovered. … Something awakens inside of her that was never there before, that is so un-Juliette. But that being said, it’s so important to keep Juliette’s insanity present and in the show. I’m like, ‘I can’t be this character unless we have these moments that fluctuate, where she can be this insane person in one second and then this very humble, grounded inspirational person in the next.‘”

We’ll let you watch the video interview above to hear Esten discuss Deacon and Rayna’s healthy sex life, which is befitting of newlyweds. He and Panettiere had fun debating who works harder to get ready for those kind of scenes. Their banter continued when we quizzed them on personal trivia to see which one of them knows the other better…

What they can both agree on is that they’re loving the new season of Nashville. It’s not just that we’ll be hearing more singing and maybe even longer portions of songs. (“Sometimes we would have to get in and get out. That’s a little tricky because a song is like a story,” Esten says. “If I was to tell you a third of a story right now, you’d be like, ‘Oh… that was interesting.’ You want to let it go to the end.”) It’s that conversations between characters on the show can breathe now, too.

“Our scenes are actually longer,” Panettiere says. “They breathe. We have time to actually feel like we’ve told the full story. You can really gauge where the characters are and what they’re feeling. You see the character’s wheels turning, and they’re not saying anything at all.”

“I’m reading the script [for the Season 5 premiere], and there’s a scene where Rayna and I are just talking,” Esten says. “Then the next scene comes, and it’s us in another room of the house and we’re still just being together! It’s like, ‘Oh, wow, we get to go there.’ All these little intricacies, along with what Hayden was saying about the unspoken moments, just the looks — that’s the stuff that drew everybody to our show in the first place. I thought the way that Rayna started the whole season — instead of flying home, she took the backroads where she rediscovers this old music — was a very symbolic way of showing what [new showrunners Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick] are saying they’re doing with the show. We are now not flying like we were; we’re taking that symbolic backroad, and rediscovering the old music.”

Related: Review: ‘Nashville’ Is Back, Slowed Down and Passionate

Now all these co-stars need is some more screentime together. Panettiere has been a fan of Esten’s since she admittedly stalked him during the audition process. “I’m doing my audition for the show,” he says. “I do a couple scenes and I sing a couple songs. I come out the door and there’s nobody in that waiting room but Hayden basically with her ear to the door and going [claps fast]. I said, ‘Can you come to all my auditions and do that?'”

“And then I did,” Panettiere says, laughing.

“That was how we met,” Esten says. “I said, ‘All right, I’ll see you on the set.’ Then I kind of laughed because I was just blowing smoke, I was nowhere near getting that role at that point. Then we saw each other at the test. Then she said, ‘See you on the set.’ Then we showed up and we were in Nashville.”

Nashville airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CMT.