Fifteen years after arriving in BlueBell, Alabama, fans are still finding comfort in the charming world of Hart of Dixie.
The beloved CW dramedy, which premiered in 2011, followed New York doctor Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson) as she traded city life for a small Southern town after inheriting half of a local medical practice. While fans were famously invested in Zoe’s ongoing love triangle with her wisecracking neighbor Wade Kinsella (Wilson Bethel) and beloved town lawyer George Tucker (Scott Porter), the true star of the series was always the cozy — and often delightfully eccentric — town of Bluebell itself.
For creator Leila Gerstein, the show’s enduring popularity boils down to one thing: community. “I think the lasting appeal of the show is that in a world that’s more and more lonely, the idea of BlueBell, of a community where everyone knows each other and has each other’s backs and falls in love with their neighbor, was just such a nice place to be in your head, and a nice place to imagine the world being,” she exclusively shared in the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.
Porter, 46, agreed, noting that audiences are still searching for exactly what Bluebell offers amid the hustle and bustle of our daily lives. “We just love each other as a community, and so many people nowadays are just yearning for that.”
Bethel, 42, credited the series’ success to its unique tone. “There was just something that felt like you were hanging out with your weird town, like your weird extended friend group,“ he told Us with a laugh. “We had an enormous amount of fun working together.”
Now, the cast and creator are celebrating nearly two decades of a series that has meant so much to so many.
“It’s incredible to see fans continuing to embrace Hart of Dixie as their comfort show,” Bilson, 44, gushed. “My feed is full of 2010s nostalgia right now, so it feels like the perfect moment to celebrate the show’s legacy and the audiences who are still discovering BlueBell 15 years later.”
Fans can continue to rediscover the magic that has kept Hart of Dixie feeling like home for nearly two decades by streaming it for free on Pluto TV. But before pressing play, read more from Gerstein, Porter and Bethel as they reveal behind-the-scenes secrets, recall the famous love triangle that caused fan uproar and tease if a possible reunion could lie ahead:
The Casting Process
Gerstein always knew that Bilson would play Zoe Hart, so it then became about casting the rest of Bluebell’s colorful town. The showrunner told Us that Bethel auditioned on the “first day” for Wade and immediately became the person to beat.
“The casting director and I, like, held hands under the table the second he came in, like, ‘Oh my god, there he is!’ — But then we still had to see a bunch of people after that!”
No one, it turned out, could measure up to Bethel, so Gerstein put in the call. Bethel accepted the offer and walked out in the middle of another show’s screen test, which he happened to be auditioning for alongside Porter.
“We were both screen testing for [Grimm] that pilot season, and while I was in the waiting room to do my screen test, I got the call that Hart of Dixie was happening, so I just got to, like, walk out of that audition, which was kind of like a gangster move,” Bethel told Us. “And then, of course, you know, Scott and I then spent the next four years working together.”
“In the midst of the test, he stood up and went, ‘All right, I got a job, I’ll see y’all later!’” Porter recalled. “And walked out! Little did I know he had just signed off to be Wade Kinsella in Hart of Dixie.”
As for Porter, Gerstein had her eye on the actor after seeing him star in Friday Night Lights as Jason Street and catching him singing on a YouTube video.
“He was very charming and very funny. And so we had a meeting with him, and I think he was getting multiple offers at the same time,” Gerstein said, adding that they ultimately “swooped” in to get him right before he went to test for another show. “It was very, very stressful,” she said with a laugh, “and obviously we’re so lucky.”
It turns out Gerstein’s offer would allow audiences to view him in a new light.
“I got a phone call from Leila, and she said, ‘Listen, you’ve come from Friday Night Lights. People see you as a dramatic actor, but what I saw in Friday Night Lights and what I saw in Music and Lyrics, and what I know of your background in musical theater, is you’re actually pretty funny, and I don’t think the world has seen it.’ It was a really great pitch, really solid angle to come at, because the other show I was testing for was Revenge.”
As Porter got to the parking lot for his Revenge audition, he got a second call from Leila – this time offering him the role of George Tucker.
“I got an offer for the role of George Tucker without testing or auditioning, and I didn’t know that that could happen,” Porter shared. “I didn’t know that could be a part of this whole journey of being an actor, is that someone might actually see you in the role and just say it’s yours if you want it. And when I got that offer, I said, ‘You know what? I think I do want to spend the next couple of years of my life doing something light-hearted and fun and different for me.’ And that’s how I ended up on Hart of Dixie.”
Casting carried on beyond the love triangle. Cress Williams ultimately was cast as former NFL star-turned-mayor Lavon Hayes after being told to “come back in without a beard.”
“He knocked us off our chairs, he had totally transformed,” Gerstein told Us — while Jaime King landed the part of George’s fiancée, Lemon Breeland, after bringing a fresh take on the character.
“We saw a million Lemons. There were some who were really, really mean, and there were some who were really, really, hilariously funny, and then Jaime brought a really funny, really strong Lemon who also had this, like, pathos to her that she could channel,” Gerstein said. “I think we saw a reel, and we were like, ‘Whoa, there she is.’”
And with that, the heart of Bluebell was born. “We really lucked out, because it is also the nicest best group of actors. We were all family, we’re still all so close,” Gerstein gushed.
Bluebell Come to Life
With the cast set, it was time to create the perfect small southern town. After shooting the pilot on location, Gerstein and crew pivoted to the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, rebuilding the town from scratch.
“We were looking for like a really cute old place, where it was aspirational and you would want to be there and spend time there,” she explained. “I also didn’t want there to be a lot of cars. I wanted it to feel like it was a place where people walked and ran into people.”
As the show hit the air and evolved, Bluebell grew into a character in and of itself, creating a sense of community that pulled viewers in just as much as Zoe’s love life or work drama could.
“The lasting appeal of the show is that in a world that’s more and more lonely, the idea of a Bluebell, of a community where everyone knows each other and has each other’s backs and falls to love with their neighbor, and has amazing clothes, is just such a nice place to be in your head, and a nice place to imagine the world being,” Gerstein shared.
Porter agreed, noting that Bluebell feels like a “timeless community” anyone would “dream of living in.”
“We just love each other, really, as a community, and I think so many of us nowadays are just yearning for that. Just loving each other,” he explained. “Leila told us that the reason she wrote this idyllic town of Bluebell was that she went to the South, and she dipped her toes in a body of water and on a dock as the sun set, and she said, ‘Wouldn’t life be so easy if this is what it was?’ And if television is a form of escapism, then let’s give somebody a place to go where they can just check everything at the door and just be for an hour and laugh and love and enjoy their time with these characters. I think that’s really what sticks with people.”
A New Kind of Female Lead
Hart of Dixie has been lauded for creating a strong and complex female lead character — but at the time, Gerstein said there was pushback and disbelief that someone as attractive as Bilson, who wore designer clothes and high heels, could actually be a doctor.
“It’s so funny because if you think about every male medical show — I think about House — like, he’s a terrible person,” Gerstein said with a laugh. “I got a lot of criticism about the idea that [Zoe] is smart enough to be a doctor, and other really, really ridiculous stuff at the time, that there weren’t as many flawed female characters. I think that now, obviously, there are. But to make a good TV show, your main character needs to grow and change.”
Changing the Tone
While Zoe’s career was always a central part of the series, Hart of Dixie’s tone undeniably shifted over the course of its four seasons. Gerstein said she quickly realized the series was most successful when it leaned into the more comedic story lines rather than the medical-heavy ones — something the show’s network, The CW, initially pushed back on.
“The first few episodes of season 1, I can, like, feel the network,” she said. “They really wanted the show to be a certain thing, and I think of my voice and my natural inclination is that I didn’t need it to be a show talking about like the issues in North versus South. I didn’t want to talk about, like, the broader problems of America. Our little show was about love and happiness. I wanted it to be [a] full escapist romantic comedy, and so I think there are some more serious, more serious plot lines in the first few episodes, and more serious medical stories that we eventually [got rid of].”
Gerstein noted that she also felt the show sang when it was more of an “ensemble” than just about Zoe’s journey.
“We fell in love with, like, Tom and Wanda, and all the people of Bluebell that we met along the way,” she said. “We wanted all of them to have their moments, and so, as the world grew, we tried to make the show more inclusive of everyone else’s story line, and to give it that small town energy.”
Eventually, the network gave Gerstein the creative freedom she needed.
“Because we were never a huge hit, we just flew under the radar, so we were never a problem, and we did our own thing,” she confessed. “We did it for very, very, very little money, but we did our own thing, and we had a really good time doing it.”
Wade vs. George: The Ultimate Love Triangle
When George picked Zoe up on the side of the road in Hart of Dixie’s pilot, it felt like a sealed deal that these two people were destined for each other. Their connection was instant, and much of the first season revolved around their growing and complicated feelings for each other. But just as George decided not to walk down the aisle with his fiancée, Zoe gave in to the other feelings she was hiding — the ones for her neighbor Wade.
The two spent nearly every episode at each other’s throats, but the sparks between them just couldn’t be denied and Zoe ended up picking Wade over George in season 2. It was a pivot that Gerstein admitted was a mix of Bilson and Bethel’s chemistry and incredulous fan demand.
“She was going to [eventually start dating] George, but at the time, we were barraged with Zade shooters, as we would call them,” Gerstein said with a laugh. “They were [rooting hard for] those two to get together, and then once they did, it was hard to go backwards. George didn’t really have the chance.”
Even after Wade cheated on Zoe in season 2, the outcry for Zade to reunite never died down, making a circle back to George nearly impossible for the writers.
“It was hard to know at that point how people were going to actually feel about George and Zoe together, because conceptually it feels great, but we had some doubts about it feeling like everyone’s going backwards, and him getting hurt,” Gerstein explained, “because we knew [Zoe] really loved Wade. And could we forgive her for being with George when we knew at that moment that she loved Wade?”
After Zoe’s confusing feelings for George resurfaced one last time, Gerstein decided that Porter was too “funny,” “good” and “handsome” to have all his story lines revolve around Zoe. “I [was] like, ‘You know, he’s a real rom-com lead in his own right and deserving of like his own true love!’” she told Us.
Porter, for his part, was ultimately OK with George going off on his own. He does, however, carry a slight (but loving) grudge that George and Zoe never got a real shot.
“I do still believe that they were robbed of the chance to at least explore that romantic side of their relationship,” Porter confessed. “And really, it’s selfishly because Rachel and I worked so well together. We are very similar beings when it comes to how we approach acting, and you would very often find us the morning of, without our lines memorized, but the scenes understood, and then the two of us would be scrambling to get those words finalized because to both of us it’s more important that the comedic beats are there and that the characters are understood.”
In the end, he agreed that Zoe and George were probably better off as just friends.
“A lot of that is because of how driven each of them is individually, and I feel like they’re very similar and samey, and would be comfortable together, but I feel like both of those characters needed to find somebody who was willing to push them and force them out of their comfort zone. I don’t know that the two of them would have done it for each other,” he explained.
The Inevitability of Wade
While the love triangle between Zoe, George and Wade continued to unfold throughout the next few seasons, there was eventually no denying that Wade was The One for Zoe, and the pair ended up married with a baby by the show’s series finale.
“I think we clicked pretty early on,” Bethel told Us of his connection with Bilson. “A lot of what you see on screen was our natural vibe. There’s sort of a prickliness, a little bit of poking, plenty of good humor, and then we genuinely like each other. So that helps!”
Bethel calls the Zoe and Wade romance — known as “Zade” by fans — a “happy accident” of sorts, noting that George was “supposed to be the guy who was Zoe’s endgame” before viewers (and the writers) realized he and Bilson had a “special sort of something goin on.”
“So they sort of, maybe rejiggered it a little bit,” he said, “but that’s also the amazing stuff that you get to figure out in TV. Things evolve spontaneously over time and if your writers are good and they’re paying attention to what’s going on, they can lean into that.”
The Resurgence of George
George may not have had the popular vote from fans back when Hart of Dixie was airing, but Porter told Us that he’s felt the love more as the years have passed.
“Everybody wants the bad boy until they figure out all the baggage that comes along with it, and I feel like maybe audiences, as they’ve gotten older and wiser, have come to understand, ‘Oh, maybe safer is an actual quantifiable good option,’” he explained. “And people are way more aware of that these days. They’re way more on the side of self-advocacy and what other people are doing to them in their relationships and understanding what’s toxic and what’s not. So I wonder if people see George as just a completely safe, non-toxic option, and somehow it’s gathered a little bit of steam. I have felt it over the past decade or so.”
And though George didn’t get his happily ever after with Zoe, he was plenty busy with other love interests of his own. After ending his engagement with Lemon and missing the boat with Zoe, George fell in love with Wade’s ex-wife, Tansy (Mircia Monroe), and had a rendezvous with Lavon’s cousin, Lynly (Antoinette Robertson), before eventually finding love with Lemon’s best friend, Annabeth Nass (Kaitlyn Black).
The George and Anna Beth pairing was a late-stage romance at the end of season 4, but one that fans fell in love with quickly.
“George’s endgame being Annabeth was something that I also 100 percent was very invested in at a time when they still weren’t sure where George was going to end up,” Porter shared. “There was something very cool about two characters who were born and raised and thought that life was kind of chosen for them before they got to make their own way, George with his career and his father’s input on who he should be and how he should be, and with Anna Beth’s upbringing and as Lemon’s best friend, someone who’s also always supposed to exist in the shadows and never supposed to take the reins on her own. It felt like two characters who really needed each other and would be the most supportive characters around.”
Will There Be a ‘Hart of Dixie’ Reunion?
Fifteen years after Hart of Dixie premiered — and 11 since the show said goodbye — fans are still clamoring for more of Bluebell, Alabama. If the decision was up to Gerstein, Porter and Bethel, that’s exactly what they would get.
“I would do [another season] in a second, in a heartbeat,” Gerstein told Us. “I love these people, I love this world and they have my heart. I would love to see where everyone is all these years later. Who’s still in Bluebell? Who left Bluebell? I feel like there’s a lot to be told still, and people will want to see them.”
Bethel, meanwhile, is ready for “15 more seasons” if given the chance.
“I think the writers and Leila really captured a very special tone that is really heartfelt, really fun, really funny and goofy in a way that a lot of shows are afraid to be,” he shared. “There was just something that felt like you were hanging out with your weird town, your weird extended friend group. And a lot of that was thanks to the casting. We had an amazing cast, and a cast that was really close. We had an enormous amount of fun working together, and I’m somebody who feels like that stuff always translates in spades on screen. When you’re watching a show, and it looks really f***ing fun, they were probably having fun. And we definitely were.”
Porter is also “100 percent in,” and is ready to see the “older and younger generations” of Bluebell all together at once.
“All of us, I think, would go back. I don’t think there’s a single person who worked on that show who would say no, and that’s different from some other very popular generational shows that I’ve been a part of,” Porter confessed. “Actors on other shows have a tendency to say, ‘That was a chapter of my life I’d like to put behind me,’ or, ‘I’d like to grow, I’d like to explore other things and I don’t want to go back and do the same thing.’ But I think if you gave us a chance to go back for a year and spend some more time in Bluebell? Every single one of us would say yes. And I would be one of them.”
Porter ended with a heartfelt appreciation for everyone who has tuned in to the show over the years. “I have to say a thank you to all the fans out there who have passed down our show. I feel like it’s been a little bit of a generational thing, where moms have watched it, and as their daughters and sons come of age, have passed it down to them,” he said. “I feel like television just needs more shows like Hart of Dixie, and there aren’t many of them out there.”
Where Are Hart of Dixie’s Characters Now?
If cameras did start rolling again in Bluebell, both Bethel and Porter have some sense of where their characters would be today. “A lot of who Wade is, is who Wilson is, and I have been on my own 15-year journey from being a 27-year-old starting Hart of Dixie, and that character, that 27-year-old Wilson, resembled Wade quite a bit,” Bethel told Us. “So I think there’s a version that probably, at 42, resembles a 42-year-old Wade quite a bit.”
He added, “A lot of the best parts of my 27-year-old self are still present in one way or another, and I think I’ve also figured some things out. So I think that some version of that is who would be on screen.”
Porter, meanwhile, sees George and Annabeth as the “power couple that the world didn’t see coming” — and a romance fans didn’t get enough of after they found each other in season 4.
“I think when they moved to Nashville [at the end of the show], it wasn’t too big for the two of them together. I think when George went to New York on his own, maybe it was a little bit too big for him, but the two of them together, it doesn’t feel too big,” he said. “And do I think he found success as a music manager? I don’t know. Do I think they found success as a couple? Yes, I do. They found their way together. And that’s where I’ll leave it. I don’t know what they’re doing for work, but I do know that the two of them are making it work.”
As for Gerstein, she agreed she’d “love” to see who stayed, who moved, and what everyone is up to now. One thing she knows for sure? “Zoe and Lemon’s kids are not getting along in school,” she said with a laugh.
Hart of Dixie is streaming on Pluto TV now.
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