<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Connie Britton has got her drawl back. It&amp;#039;s subtle--no more &amp;quot;y&amp;#039;alls&amp;quot;--but there is a nice, syrupy slow way she hangs on to vowels as we chat over glasses of ros\u00E9 on a terrace with a view of the Pacific. We&amp;#039;re in Los Angeles, but I&amp;#039;m reminded of the Texas two-step twang she so easily adopted for her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Tami Taylor, a patient, straight-talking mom on the beloved TV drama Friday Night Lights. This time, the accent is part of another strong-minded Southern character: Connie stars in the new ABC series Nashville as Rayna James, a country star who is trying to hold on to her fans, her fame, and her record label, and hold off a calculating, much younger rival (played by Hayden Panettiere). To fully inhabit Rayna&amp;#039;s world, Connie is not only packing up and moving to Nashville in real life, she&amp;#039;s learning how to sing--Grand Ole Opry--style. That last part, she says, is terrifying. &amp;quot;When I recorded the songs for the pilot, I didn&amp;#039;t let anyone listen to me, except for my voice teacher,&amp;quot; she admits. But it went well enough that now she&amp;#039;s thinking of composing some country-Western tunes of her own. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t you have to be sad to write a country song?&amp;quot; I ask. Connie shakes her head. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re sitting here, looking at the ocean, drinking ros\u00E9 and eating cheese,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;What could be sad about that?&amp;quot; The lady makes a fine point. What&amp;#039;s so impressive is that she&amp;#039;s created her own happiness. Last November, the 45-year-old actress became a mother to son Yoby, whom she adopted from an Ethiopian orphanage. It was the culmination of a three-year process. &amp;quot;I always knew I wanted a child, and I always assumed I&amp;#039;d be doing it with a man,&amp;quot; Connie says. &amp;quot;Then my parents passed away within three years of each other. Right after that, a lightbulb went off in my head and I thought, What am I waiting for? I wasn&amp;#039;t in a relationship at the time, but I thought, This is something I want to do. I can do it.&amp;quot; She also didn&amp;#039;t hesitate when TV producer Ryan Murphy came calling with a juicy new part. &amp;quot;[He said,] &amp;#039;You&amp;#039;re going to do something completely different than we have ever see you do before,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Connie says of how she was cast as Vivien, a betrayed wife who is impregnated with a demon child on FX&amp;#039;s American Horror Story. The daring move struck her as &amp;quot;a lot of fun,&amp;quot; and she carried it off with enough aplomb to land an Emmy nomination. &amp;quot;It felt so good to take those risks,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;So when Callie Khori came along with Nashville... I don&amp;#039;t know, I guess I was lured by the sequins!&amp;quot; We doubt it. Here, the utterly down-to-earth Connie Britton opens up, girlfriend-style, about motherhood, single life, and convincing TV execs to keep her roles hot. REDBOOK: I know you had some say about the development of Tami Taylor, your character on Friday Night Lights, and Vivien on American Horror Story. Have you had any input in shaping your Nashville character? CONNIE BRITTON: I was pretty articulate from the beginning that I wanted to weigh in on that. We have an opportunity to show a woman who is self-made and successful and really trying to have it all, and the complexities and difficulties of it. Particularly being a 40-something woman, I&amp;#039;ve really been hounding them about that! Our culture tends to glorify youth in such a gigantic way. Here we have an opportunity to show the sexiness and gorgeousness of a woman with experience and wisdom. I think the more clich\u00E9d way of dealing with the story is: A woman hits 40 and she&amp;#039;s over the hill and then a new girl comes along. As if it&amp;#039;s that simple. My experience of reaching the age of 40 is anything but that. RB: Do you see all these women--Tami, Vivien, and Rayna--as having any common ground? CB: It&amp;#039;s important in whatever character I play that I show as many different levels of what it is to be a woman as I can. That includes being sexy! I want to get rid of the whole idea that women who are wives and mothers and working in the world no longer have any interest in their sexuality, because that&amp;#039;s not my experience. I love to play a woman who is making mistakes, because we all do. Making a mistake is a by-product of trying to be a better person. RB: Is your character based on some performers we might know? CB: Not at all! She&amp;#039;s not a composite. There are certainly singers I&amp;#039;ve been inspired by. But I&amp;#039;m trying to establish what my voice is. RB: Are you turning into a country music fan? CB: Before Nashville, I wasn&amp;#039;t an aficionado, though I had listened to it. Miranda Lambert is great. Patty Griffin is so incredible. T Bone Burnett [Nashville&amp;#039;s executive music producer] made the most extensive audio library for my character [see &amp;quot;Connie&amp;#039;s Must-Play List,&amp;quot; at right]. RB: How&amp;#039;s the singing coming along? CB: I remember one day my voice teacher pulled out this Bonnie Raitt song and I burst into tears and said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll never be able to sing as well as Bonnie Raitt!&amp;quot; I have this theory that I got the nerve to play a singing star because I had just adopted Yoby and I was singing to him all the time. I was making up songs: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re climbing up the stairs, up the stairs.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s a big fan of &amp;quot;On top of spaghetti....&amp;quot; I like to sing him the song that Billy Idol performed in the &amp;#039;80s, &amp;quot;Mony Mony.&amp;quot; I created a whole musical score with my son. RB: Do you bring him to work? CB: Everybody on the set loves him, and he loves being there. The other day he got to sit on a crane, which was very exciting, and T Bone gave him a guitar.  RB: Did the experience of playing such a terrific mother on Friday Night Lights help when you became a mom? CB: I can&amp;#039;t think of anything specific, except oddly I have this general, vague feeling that, yeah, I&amp;#039;ve done this before. RB: How were you so convincing as a mom on FNL when you weren&amp;#039;t one in real life? CB: I don&amp;#039;t know. People used to ask me that all the time, and I never really knew the answer except I think I had a strong instinct for it, have a strong instinct for it. One thing I tapped into very early on doing FNL was that a lot of what it feels like to be a mother is that you feel like you have no idea what the hell you&amp;#039;re doing. That was true for me as an actor. I would go into some of those more intense mom scenes feeling really terrified. I was like, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know what to do here.&amp;quot; And then at some point I realized, well, actually, that&amp;#039;s exactly how a mother would be feeling. And now that I&amp;#039;m a mother, I realize the depth to which that&amp;#039;s true! RB: There are a fair number of celebrities who have adopted recently. What&amp;#039;s up with that? Do you all get together for coffee? CB: Me and Angelina and Sandra Bullock and Mary-Louise Parker just get together every weekend, drink ros\u00E9, and talk about kids! No, that is not the case. Not that I wouldn&amp;#039;t love to get together with all of them and discuss their experiences. But there is a community of people who have adopted children from Ethiopia, and that&amp;#039;s something I want to be a part of for sure. To me it&amp;#039;s really important for my son to have a strong sense of that background. RB: Why did you want to adopt from there? CB: I started being interested in Ethiopia about 10 years ago. A friend had gone and was really involved in orphanages there, and I remember looking at pictures he had taken and being stunned and moved by them--by the amazing openness of the faces of the children. I ended up going and shooting film for a documentary I&amp;#039;m working on. I saw the need there firsthand. RB: Did you care what you had? CB: I wanted to get a girl out of Ethiopia for a lot of reasons. [But] they said, &amp;quot;We have this referral for you, and it&amp;#039;s a boy.&amp;quot; The second I saw his picture, I realized I had just found my son. RB: What are you learning about boys? CB: I haven&amp;#039;t learned a ton about men since having a boy, other than I realize how most men really are just always boys. One thing I&amp;#039;ve been astonished by is how hardwired we are as women and men to have certain inherent natures. My son does such boy things and is interested in such boy things, having no encouragement from me. I&amp;#039;m not going to pretend to be excited about how things are put together and fall apart. He loves balls and cars. Then I have dear friends who have baby girls and they are instantly inclined toward princesses and clothes. RB: I read that there had been someone in your life when you were thinking about adopting. CB: That&amp;#039;s true. In fact, I was thinking today that the last time I interviewed with REDBOOK [three years ago], I talked about having this wonderful man in my life. He&amp;#039;s still lovely, but he&amp;#039;s not in my life anymore, so at the moment, I&amp;#039;m a single mom. RB: Okay, what&amp;#039;s a great day with Yoby? CB: I just had the perfect day with him. I live up on this cliffside, and we walked to the local caf\u00E9 and met my dear, dear friends for breakfast and they brought their kids. The owner of the caf\u00E9 carried Yoby around for a while. And then we hiked back up the hill. Then in the afternoon we went to a friend&amp;#039;s house where there were more kids, and we played and swam and ate a yummy dinner and went home and had a bath. RB: You&amp;#039;ve moved around a lot for work. You were in Austin, TX, for FNL. Now you&amp;#039;re headed to Nashville. Are there things you bring with you to make a place immediately comfortable and familiar? CB: My son and my dog! Wherever they are, I feel at home.  CONNIE&amp;#039;S MUST-PLAY LIST The tunes that psyched her up for her barn-burning turn on Nashville:  &amp;quot;ME AND MY CHAUFFEUR BLUES&amp;quot; BY MEMPHIS MINNIE &amp;quot;T Bone [Burnett, Nashville&amp;#039;s executive music producer] and I talked about what Rayna listened to as a child, the music that inspired her. This is from an amazingly soulful artist from the &amp;#039;30s.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;CRAZY&amp;quot; BY PATSY CLINE &amp;quot;An icon of country music.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN EVERY DAY&amp;quot; BY SISTER ROSETTA THARPE &amp;quot;I watched her play guitar in a video from the &amp;#039;40s, and she absolutely ripped it up!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I STILL MISS SOMEONE&amp;quot; BY JOHNNY CASH &amp;quot;There is something about his precision and clarity. For me, it&amp;#039;s all about the storytelling.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;GET RIGHT WITH GOD&amp;quot; BY LUCINDA WILLIAMS &amp;quot;She is a prototype for the style of Rayna&amp;#039;s singing.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;SUMMER SKIN&amp;quot; BY AMY COOK &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m hoping to write a song for the show with Amy--she&amp;#039;s my friend and a great singer-songwriter from Austin.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;ANGEL FROM MONTGOMERY&amp;quot; BY JOHN PRINE AND BONNIE RAITT &amp;quot;A great song sung by two of the greats. I have admired Bonnie Raitt my whole life.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;TANGLED UP IN BLUE&amp;quot; BY BOB DYLAN "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a10693/connie-britton-nashville-cover-interview/>