TV

‘Nashville’ star Will Chase ready for his closeup

‘Nashville” viewers will have noticed the ABC drama has added yet another hunky crooner to its cast this season — Will Chase, who plays country star Luke Wheeler, the new love interest for Connie Britton’s Rayna James.

After courting Rayna in six episodes of Season Two, Chase is set for some more screen time, now that last week’s episode ended with the pair deciding to go public with their celebrity relationship. That, in turn, prompted some outcry on Twitter from “Nashville” fans who are pushing for the series’ star-crossed couple, Rayna and her former guitarist Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten).

Though he knows his character is not the hero of this story, Chase says he actually enjoys playing the “other man” in this country-music love triangle.

“The audience doesn’t think they want the Luke character in there but they do because they want to root for this other couple,” he told The Post by phone from Nashville. “I like that the relationships are messy because that’s kind of real life, and more fun to watch.”

In Wednesday night’s episode, “Nashville” goes NASCAR when Luke decides to take the lead on promoting Rayna’s new album by plastering her face and name on the race car he partly owns. He will also meet Rayna’s daughters and have words with Jeff Fordham (Oliver Hudson), the new record label boss who clashes with Rayna.

Like the rest of the “Nashville” cast, Chase does his own vocals — a good fit for his background in Broadway musicals (“Rent,” “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”) and as Michael Swift on the first season of NBC’s “Smash,” (where he played the love interest of Debra Messing’s character. Messing is now his real-life girlfriend). Besides the musicality of the role and the fact that Nashville is just an hour-and-a-half flight from his New York home, he liked that Luke was written as an equal to Rayna’s superstar character.

“There’s no baggage, no reason to be with her except that he likes her,” Chase says. “I like that they wrote him as a good guy. I don’t always get to play good guys.”

Though Luke is likened to Tim McGraw in terms of popularity, Chase says he didn’t model him after any specific real-life singer — perhaps because he only started listening to country music in the past few years (he likes Blake Shelton and George Strait).

“I grew up in Kentucky and you’d think that would translate into growing up listening to country and bluegrass, but the two things we did not listen to in my home were country and bluegrass,” says Chase, who was classically trained (he studied to be a conductor at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music) and listened to rock ’n roll for fun.

He has developed a new appreciation for the genre from filming in Nashville though, where, just like the characters on the show, evenings and weekends are spent attending performances around town and songwriter nights at the famed Bluebird Cafe.

“That’s the other cool thing about this cast — we hang out a lot, which doesn’t really happen a lot in television,” Chase says. “Everybody on the show plays out — at the Opry, at The Bluebird. We tend to hang out and go see them.”

Chase is signed on through the end of the season, and while “Nashville” awaits renewal, he would like to return should the show get a third season. For now, he’ll settle for weighing in on a more pressing matter — the debate over what should be the nickname for the new happy couple, “Ruke” or “Layna?”

“They’re so bad because I have a single syllable name,” he laments with a laugh. “Ruke is horrible. I guess Layna is what I’d push for? Rayna is the star of the show so we’ll do Layna. I’ll get one letter in there.”