Don Dixie Bryce backstory episode, LeAnn Rimes song

Spoiler alert: This story contains major plot details from Thursday’s episode of ABC’s “9-1-1: Nashville.”

It’s the moment every “9-1-1: Nashville” fan has been waiting for: the origin story of Don Hart (Chris O’Donnell), his old flame Dixie Bennings (LeAnn Rimes), and his wife Bryce Hart (Jessica Capshaw).

The episode, titled “Don Begins,” travels from the present day in Nashville, where 113 is located, to when Don was a young boy, traumatized by the loss of his parents and infant sister in an arson attack on his parents’ home. That same night, little Don meets little Dixie, who happens to live down the street with her grandmother. Dixie and her grandmother comfort Don and accompany him to the hospital until CPS comes and his life changes.

Then, time jumps to Don’s youth (played by Ben Winchell), where he once again crosses paths with Dixie (Noah Beth Solomon), and this time they both end up in jail for the night. Once they were able to go out and reconnect, their love story properly began. They moved into a small apartment together, he supported her music career and she supported his firefighter training, and their life together was great until it started to fall apart due to stress and time.

When Dixie goes on tour as a backup dancer for Faith Hill, Don eventually meets and falls in love with Bryce (a younger version played by Hunter King) and thinks about what he wants to do with the rest of his life. By the time Dixie returns and wants things back to normal, it’s already too late. Don and Bryce are so close that Bryce gets the Nashville police to reinvestigate his family’s arson case, leading to the arrest of the killer.

The episode ends with another flashback. This time, it’s about the night Dixie and Don slept together when he and his wife, Bryce, were separated and pregnant with their son, Blue.

“I was so happy to know this was coming and for people to really get a glimpse of Dixie and Don’s origin story,” Rhimes told Variety. “I think it’s going to give us a different perspective on these characters going forward. The dynamic between Don and Dixie changes. I think people have seen Dixie in all sorts of manipulative ways, but now when we see young Dixie and her heart through the righteous Noah, she… I think it’s really great. In this episode where she plays Dixie, this wild heart and the way she was when she was alive took hold of her and turned her into a more bitter kind of manipulator.”It’s so much fun for me as an actress to play the different layers of her. ”

Rhimes added: “I’ve seen so many people struggle with, ‘We love her, we hate her.'” It varies depending on the episode. And now that we know so much about Don and Dixie’s connection, I think they’re really going to be at odds. ”

Another reason this episode was special for Rhimes is that she wrote and performed the song “Wild Things Run” as young Dixie, even though she is only playing Dixie in the current timeline. Solomon originally sang the song during filming, but Rhimes recorded the vocals two weeks in advance to use at the top of the scene. To do that, Rimes has had to make some adjustments to the way she sings these days.

“Her voice is my voice. I had to make myself look 20 years younger,” Rhimes said. “I took out all the lower ends of my voice and made it resonate all over, like around the nose. And it took me back to the days of ‘Coyote Ugly,’ where I had to do that for Piper Perabo’s voice.”

Rhimes said “9-1-1: Nashville” showrunner Rashad Raisani pitched her on the idea of ​​writing a song for the show when he first told her he was developing an origin story episode for Dixie and Don.

“I know there are a lot of great writers on the show, but when I heard they were looking for a song to launch Dixie’s career, I knew this was it for me,” said Rhimes, who co-wrote “Wild Things Run” with co-creator Darrell Brown. “I make a living writing music and singing, so take advantage of me. And I went to Rashad and said, ‘Hey, I want to try this, because I think it’s so powerful for someone who’s lived this character to write for her.’ He sent me the first draft of the scene, and the title “Wild Things Run” came to me while I was lying on a massage table in Hawaii. So I said, oh, I thought this is perfect, because it felt like these two wild hearts of young people running towards each other. ”

By the end of the episode’s current timeline, Don gives testimony on behalf of the man who killed his family, stating that he will forgive but not forget. Bryce thanks Dixie for helping Don have that moment of peace through a previous conversation in which they shared memories of the night of the fire. However, when Bryce and Dixie part ways, Dixie once again declares that “the universe” will bring her and Don back.

And Rhimes says that Dixie isn’t just an enemy of Bryce, she really thinks so.

“Oh, I think she knows that’s true,” Rhimes said. “From the beginning, she thinks they’re inseparable from each other. And she’s obviously going to continue to love this man. I mean, it’s her baby daddy. But there’s more to it than that. There’s a real connection that Bryce and Don don’t have. And I think it’s probably the universe, and maybe it’s also about Dixie always putting herself in the line of fire.”But I think she genuinely believes that no matter what, they’re going to end up together somehow.” ”