Juliette Barnes’ MBTI and Enneagram typing has long fascinated fans of Nashville. Played by Hayden Panettiere, Juliette embodies the bold spontaneity of an ESFP paired with the intense drive of a 7w8. Her charisma, risk-taking, and emotional volatility make her one of the most compelling personality studies in the series.
ESFP 7w8 Characters
Why is Juliette Barnes from Nashville an ESFP? Continue reading for my argument using cognitive functions! The headers for each section are clickable, so you can easily access more information about the dominant function and the Enneagram type, or discover more characters who share the type.
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Extraverted Sensing
Juliette is all about taking advantage of the moment, whether that involves having an impulsive one night stand with Jeff Fordam, or joining up with a “self-help” group that turns out to be a cult and doing mission work in Bolivia, or changing labels so she can work with Rayna. She is also physically present and confrontational, storming into rooms to confront someone the moment she feels upset. When she hears Rayna is considering dropping her from the tour, she goes straight to Rayna’s office to confront her on the spot, ignoring the PR advice of her manager. She comes alive and is charismatic on stage, and says that’s the easiest thing in the world, to connect to an audience; Juliette stops one of her performances to engage with a heckler in the audience who wants her to go home. Everything she does is spontaneous; she buys a mansion after years of not wanting to settle down, only to find out later that the man she bought it with has swindled her, signs deals on the spot, gets married in secret so she can have sex with a football player, then dumps him a couple of weeks later, gives Maddie a chance to perform live, and pushes herself hard. Juliette insists she is fine and goes on stage, even though she’s still having problems after her accident; she is impatient to rush through physical therapy and get back to work, and doesn’t like breaks from activity.
Introverted Feeling
She has intense internal emotional reactions, and they cause her to make decisions on the spot, such as after she sees a woman collapse on a work crew in Bolivia, she confronts management about it, and gets locked in her room. Juliette has to escape to get home, but not only is she grateful to escape, she is willing to lose her entire fortune in a lawsuit against the cult leader, to expose him; she considers it worth the sacrifice to free people from “enslavement.” Elsewhere, Juliette shows both selfish and unselfish displays of Fi; when she discovers her mother betrayed her by selling stories to the tabloids, Juliette cuts her off instantly. She refused to talk to her for years, after suppressing the sexual abuse her mother put her through. If Avery questions her characters or choices, she spirals because his words match her internal narrative about being unlovable. But Juliette tends to emotionally shut down, withdraw, refuse to talk about what is going on inside her, and leaves others in the dark about what is “really” happening in her mind. She hides her pain, shame, and grief except in raw confessions on stage, where she admits to her fans that she is just a person who makes poor decisions. When a famous songwriter gives her a music track to pass on to Maddie, Juliette steals it to help her floundering career. And she values being authentic even when it threatens to destroy her reputation.
Extraverted Thinking
Juliette often lashes out with harsh words, or tells Maddie that in the business, sometimes you have to make compromises to get ahead. She signs with people she hates, because she knows it will be good for her brand or business, goes on tour with people she dislikes (but then treats them poorly). She asserts her dominance over anything she feels belongs to her, like Avery, her baby, her trailer, when Layla starts “moving in” on her. Juliette tells people, “we’re doing it my way,” micromanages her staff, fires people on the spot, and barks orders. If ticked off, she will list the reasons why someone is incompetent, bring up facts to hurt people (“without me, you’d be nothing”), etc. But when in a calm frame of mind, she easily negotiates contracts, plans out the song sets and dance moves, sets boundaries with her label heads, hires new people, and makes tactical decisions. Fast.
Introverted Intuition
This is Juliette’s blind spot. She lives so much in her feelings in the moment, she fails to think about the long-term effects of her behavior—sleeping with Jeff threatens and almost destroys her relationship with Avery. She gets pregnant without meaning to, twice. Dumping her nice football player boyfriend without a word to him gets her trashed in the press. Her outbursts lead to losing fans; reporters take her sound bytes out of context and use them against her (implying Juliette doesn’t believe in God). She joins a cult, looking for deeper meaning and wanting someone else to interpret signs for her, and winds up in trouble. Juliette recognizes things about her relationships after the fact—that every time someone loves her, she pushes them away; that her fear makes her sabotage her relationships, and seeing her self-destructive patterns. Under stress, she also becomes more fearful and negative than usual; she will never walk again, Avery will leave her, her career is over, there’s nothing left to live for and work toward.
The Enneagram 7
Juliette is wildly optimistic about herself and openly confident; she believes (accurately) that she is a charismatic performer, who can turn a crowd around with just the right song, and thinks (sometimes irrationally) that she can recover from just about anything. Her can-do attitude is one of her defining traits, but she can also be delusional and self-harming. Juliette ruins a lot of her relationships because she starts to feel trapped, then doesn’t want to deal with the unpleasant emotional consequences—like her relationship with a football player. It’s fun and challenging at first, so she gets married to him so they can have good times in the back of the limo, but then he starts making her feel a little too “domesticated,” so she gets afraid of what their life might look like together and jilts him. Juliette believes she can think her way out of things, that somehow Maddie won’t find out about her stolen song and it won’t hurt their friendship. She often turns to booze to solve her problems or help her forget, and winds up sleeping with Jeff… which ruins her relationship with Avery. And that starts her temporary spiral to 1 behaviors. For a handful of episodes, Juliette is extremely hard on herself. She thinks she did the wrong, bad thing, and is a bad person; she stops her partying lifestyle, asks forgiveness, tries to rein in her impulses, and is self-critical. But this also makes her miserable.
The 8 Wing
Juliette is nothing if not aggressive; when other entertainers threaten her spotlight, she gets in their face and tells them off or fires them for jumping in to take over, when she has a mental breakdown on stage (“you thought you could just take my place, huh?”). She gets up in her management’s face, and fires him on the spot a couple of times. Feuds with Rayna, Layla, and others, in public and in private. She gets fired from her label for refusing to do what Jeff told her to do, and by doubling down on her public words rather than eating them. When the cult leader threatens to ruin her if she disgraces him in public, that just makes her angry and more determined to do it. Juliette often makes foolish decisions about her relationships, her career, and her music, when people tell her “don’t do that,” because she has to assert her dominance and make sure they know that they have no control over her.
A Frustrating Musician
Juliette is extremely talented, but a real pill most of the time. She can be selfish, hedonistic, and foolish, yet is likable despite herself. She seems to always handle things badly, whether that is choosing to get mixed up with the wrong people, or ignoring the perfectly wonderful husband and baby she has left at home, in favor of neglecting them and being a workaholic. And yet, I wanted to see her get a happy ending of some kind, if only to watch her mature and be less of an emotional powder keg.
