The 'Nashville' 'Dancing with the Stars' Crossover Is Likely the Product of Hollywood Magic

It looks like Wednesday night's new episode of Nashville, "I'm Coming Home To You," will be quite a doozy, as we see Rayna Jaymes going full-out for her campaign to win some CMA awards. It's not just for the benefit of her own confidence and success, but mainly because this is her first album and first CMAs on her new label Highway 65, separate from Jeff Fordham (aka The Devil) at Edgehill. In this week's episode, Rayna's campaign takes her to Dancing With The Stars in another move of ABC cross-promotion (the first was Nashville's promotion of ABC's CMA Awards). Rayna made the call to appear on DWTS without her beau Luke Wheeler in tow, despite the producer wanting the couple to appear together, but settling for Rayna performing a never-before-heard single on the show. The promo for "I'm Coming Home To You" (below) features an appearance from DWTS host Tom Bergeron which begs the question: Did Nashville actually film at a real episode of Dancing with the Stars or is it all just Hollywood trickery? It seems the answer is the latter.

As cool as it would be to see the fictional Rayna James mix it up with the DWTS dancers like Mark Ballas and Witney Carson, as well as with the "stars" from this season like Alfonso Ribeiro and especially Tommy Chong (who knew he'd last this long?), it seems unlikely that Nashville would actually film their episode during a live-studio taping. They already filmed parts of their Season 3 premiere as a live show, and it really wasn't the most effective trick in the world.


It seems more likely that Bergeron guest-starred along with some of the dancers at the Nashville sound stages in Nashville, Tenn. itself prior to the the premiere of DWTS, though again, it would seriously hilarious to see Tommy Chong interact with Rayna. I actually can't stop thinking about it.

Speaking of interesting interactions that Rayna would have with the DWTS current family of celebrities and dancers, it also doesn't seem likely that Nashville would film on the DWTS stage, considering one of the dancers, Derek Hough, currently appears on the series as Noah, Juliette's co-star and friend from her Patsy Cline movie. While they could just hide him backstage while Rayna performed her little number, he is performing with one of the contestants on Wednesday night, so the timing really isn't the most convenient.

But what if Rayna was actually performing on DWTS as one of the contestants? Now that I would have to see, especially because it would be pretty much impossible to root against her. Or even better, what if Connie Britton was a contestant on DWTS? She wouldn't even have to get up and dance, I think her perfect hair would win her the mirrorball trophy, hands down.

Images: Mark Levine/ABC; Giphy