Meet the Netflix ‘Heartland’ Cast and Their Characters (With Photos)
The ‘Heartland’ cast on Netflix pairs an Academy Award winner with a real country singer in a thriller that heads into the dark side of Nashville. The film arrives on the streaming service on November 13 and follows a retired country star who searches for her missing niece.
Shana Feste, who wrote and directed ‘Country Strong’, leads a lineup that mixes screen veterans with working musicians. The ensemble also includes Paul Sparks, Hill Harper, Norbert Leo Butz, Wynn Everett, Isabelle Kusman and David Rysdahl. Here is who plays whom, one actor at a time.
Jessica Chastain
Jessica Chastain stars as Misty Jones, a retired country music legend who left the spotlight behind. Misty moves back to her hometown and begins looking for her missing niece, though the search leads her into a more tangled web of secrets.
Netflix points to ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ and ‘Molly’s Game’ among her earlier work. She holds an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, and Time magazine included her on its 2012 list of 100 influential people. Her roles also include ‘Interstellar’ and ‘The Martian’.
Music is familiar ground for her, since she played Tammy Wynette in the miniseries ‘George & Tammy’ and earned an Emmy nomination for it. She told People that the earlier project had already sent her to “country-music graduate school,” and she said she could draw on that experience to prepare for Misty.
Carter Faith
Carter Faith plays Charlie Heart, the missing niece at the center of the story. Charlie is a rising country singer, which mirrors the actress’s own career.
Faith is a real country singer and songwriter. She released her debut album, Cherry Valley, in 2025. She was one of the first three actors announced for the film in September 2025, alongside Chastain and John Hawkes.
The film marks Faith’s screen acting debut. Her music career has continued alongside the project, and BroadwayWorld reported in July that she would release a deluxe edition of her debut album titled Cherry Valley Forever.
Garrett Hedlund
Garrett Hedlund plays Roy Combs, and Netflix lists ‘Triple Frontier’ and ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ among his credits. He is also known for ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Four Brothers’, and he appeared in ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’.
Hedlund joined the production in October 2025, alongside Jennifer Nettles, Ross Lynch and Ben Dickey. That wave of additions rounded out a cast that had been announced only weeks earlier.
Principal photography began on September 29, 2025, at Shadowbox Studios in Atlanta under the working title HTLD. Filming in Georgia described the project as a mystery thriller headlined by Chastain.
Jennifer Nettles
Jennifer Nettles plays Winnie Jo Lean, and Netflix credits her with roles in ‘Harriet’ and ‘The Righteous Gemstones’. That acting résumé sits beside a long career in music.
Nettles is a singer, songwriter, actress and record producer. She has Grammy Awards, four Country Music Association Awards and an American Music Award to her name.
Her casting fits a pattern in which several country music singers step into Feste’s world of music. Netflix describes ‘Heartland’ as a musical journey through the dark, and the film follows Feste’s earlier work on ‘Country Strong’.
John Hawkes
John Hawkes plays Clark, and Netflix lists ‘Winter’s Bone’ and ‘The Sessions’ among his credits. He has Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations to his name.
Hawkes was part of the original announcement in September 2025, when Netflix was named as the film’s distributor. His early attachment suggests the role was central to the project from the start.
Ross Lynch rounds out the leading names as Jace, and Netflix points to ‘Teen Beach Movie’ and ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ among his work. With so many working country musicians sharing scenes with Jessica Chastain in ‘Heartland’, which of them do you expect to hold their own in Misty Jones’s Nashville mystery, and does Carter Faith’s first screen role make you want to press play, so tell us in the comments.
