VARIETY: Kelsea Ballerini on Chase Stokes, PATTERNS, Acting and More

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In a new cover story for VARIETY’s first-ever Power of Women Nashville issue, Kelsea Ballerini speaks with Music Reporter Thania Garcia about her boyfriend Chase Stokes and his support through the making of “Patterns,” the difficulties she faced performing songs from “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” a potential career in acting, and more. 

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Ballerini on Chase Stokes and how he supported her through the making of “Patterns”: Part of Ballerini’s story with her latest album, 2024’s “Patterns,” includes her new relationship with “Outer Banks” actor Chase Stokes. She wrote the song “To the Men That Love Women After Heartbreak” about him.

“When we first started talking, I hadn’t put out ‘Welcome Mat’ yet, and he stood beside me through that whole musical chapter. But when it was time to write ‘Patterns,’ I wanted to write about the things we were learning in our relationship. And I think with a lot of patience and therapy, we mutually have grown a lot in these last two-plus years.”

On performing songs from her 2023 EP “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat”: “Welcome Mat” details her tumultuous marriage to and divorce from Australian singer-songwriter Morgan Evans. While her following grew exponentially, she found reliving those experiences onstage every night, in front of fans projecting their own difficulties onto hers, to be harrowing. At one recent show, a fan sitting in the front row presented her divorce papers for Ballerini to autograph (Ballerini politely declined), and another interrupted a performance of her song “Penthouse” to scream “Fuck him!” about the song’s subject.

“That EP was about the darkest time in my life, and singing any of those songs live was never the plan, if I’m being honest. I very quickly had to detach from what I wrote to get through it.”

On why she was terrified to release “Patterns” after “Welcome Mat”: “So many more people had ears on my music, which has always been the goal. But it was just as beautiful as it was really difficult…I was fearful it wouldn’t resonate. But musically, it’s the most interesting record I’ve made, and I love that I was creating with women that let me lead my own story.”

On getting into acting: Ballerini is hoping to follow her guest cameo on Mike White’s “Doctor Odyssey” with a spot in “Run, Rose, Run,” the feature-film adaptation of a novel co-written by Dolly Parton and James Patterson that follows a young songwriter in Nashville. Ballerini was featured in the 2022 audiobook version.

“Dolly, out of the blue, asked me to do the audiobook with her, and I had never done that before. That experience is what made me want to try acting. I think the idea of it gives me the ick, only because I don’t like watching it back. I’ve auditioned for a lot of things and not gotten them. But I’m learning to find those feelings and harness them into different methods of storytelling, and so far, it’s been so good for me.”

On getting rejected from a record executive and finding her own sound earlier in her career: “He looked at me and said, ‘Well, there’s already a Taylor Swift.’ And he was right. I had to grow into my own identity as an artist and a songwriter and learn to differentiate myself…Everything that I loved seeing other artists do is what I wanted to do, and I’ve always had the audacity to do it. I don’t think I’m the most talented person in the world—I know very well that I’m not—but I trust myself enough to know that I will always find a way to make it work.”

On temporarily leaving Nashville for Los Angeles to be a judge on “The Voice”: “I needed to move there if I wanted to apply myself completely, especially knowing the workload of being a coach on the show.”

[Photo Credit: Victoria Stevens for Variety Magazine]

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