Hayden Panettiere is worried about being typecast. Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
On “Nashville” Hayden Panettiere plays conniving, ruthless teen queen Juliette Barnes, but she’d like people to know that she wasn’t typecast.
“My fear is people being able to differentiate between Hayden andJulietteBarnes, my character,” she told the Belfast Telegraph. “And sometimes it takes time for that image of Juliette to escape from their minds.”
Hayden says fans are shocked when they meet her and she’s not liquor-swigging, boyfriend-stealing Juliette. “It’s wild to me how people are like, ‘You’re nice!’
“I’m like, well jeez! If I was playing this character and that was really me and I knew that I was so hated and the villain, and that didn’t make me change my attitude, that would be truly awful.”
Hayden also says that she loves singing, but suffers from terrible stage fright — another thing that sets her apart from Juliette, who’s at her best in front of a crowd. Hayden’s using “Nashville” as a chance to face her fears, she says.
Hayden’s costar Connie Britton spoke to Metro about the relationship between their strong-willed characters.
“I’m working hard to not have the show become about [a young versus old rivalry], because I certainly don’t feel old and I’m not interested in playing old,” she said. “I don’t want it to be about one woman versus another woman. I think what our two characters represent is two people in very different phases of their life and different phases in the music business. Our show is called ‘Nashville,’ and a big part of that is the music business. And so I think our two characters are a gateway into that story.”
