Ryan Phillippe is heading to Nashville. ABC has signed the 51-year-old actor to a multi-year deal as a series regular on 9-1-1: Nashville, joining the first responder drama for its second season, which is set to air in fall 2026.
Phillippe will play a brilliant, iconoclastic detective who relocates to Nashville from New York — a seductive bad boy with a past who stirs up drama among the first responders while leading an investigation into a mysterious criminal tormenting the city on a biblical scale. The character, with his fish-out-of-water New York edge dropped into the heart of Tennessee, gives the show a new dramatic axis around which its existing ensemble can orbit.
He joins current series regulars Chris O’Donnell, Jessica Capshaw, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, LeAnn Rimes, Michael Provost, Juani Feliz, Hailey Kilgore, and Hunter McVey.
The casting reflects a deliberate midseason course correction. The spinoff saw its viewership dip to a low in the fall finale and remain low after its winter return before rebounding and hitting two series-high marks, one in late January and one in late March. The show currently averages nearly 8 million total viewers over 35 days of multiplatform viewing across ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+ and digital platforms. There had been retooling midstream while Season 1 was ongoing, with more changes planned for the offseason — Phillippe’s casting being the first major one to land.
Both 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville rank in the Top 10 dramas among Adults 18-49 in multiplatform viewing over seven days, with the Nashville spinoff standing as TV’s number one new drama in the demographic. ABC renewed both shows in early March, banking on the back-to-back Thursday night pairing to hold through the 2026-27 season.
For Phillippe, the deal marks his third series regular role on ABC. His television credits include Secrets and Lies and Big Sky on the network, as well as the lead in USA’s Shooter. He most recently starred in Prime Video’s YA drama Motorheads and next appears in Paramount’s One Mile and its sequel, One Mile More.
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9-1-1: Nashville premiered on ABC on October 9, 2025 and is the second spinoff of the 9-1-1 franchise, following 9-1-1: Lone Star, which concluded in February 2025. The series is produced by 20th Television in association with Ryan Murphy Television, with Murphy, Tim Minear, showrunner Rashad Raisani, O’Donnell, Brad Buecker, Brad Falchuk, and Angela Bassett serving as executive producers.
9-1-1: Nashville returns April 30, with the Season 1 finale set for May 7.
