Derek Hough Goes Country: Appears On ‘Nashville,’ Gets Paired With Sadie Robertson On ‘DWTS’

Derek Hough is going country in more ways that one this week. For starters, the Dancing with the Stars pro was on Wednesday night’s episode of Nashville alongside actress Hayden Panettiere. According to Zap2It, Derek plays a Hollywood actor named Noah on the show, and he will be featured in two episodes. He recently talked about working with Hayden, and he had nothing but wonderful things to say about her — and the experience on Nashville overall.

“My character is comforting and trying to make her feel at ease since she’s out of her element. I’m there to say, ‘Hey don’t worry. It’s all good. You are going to be great.’ In real life it’s funny because Hayden was very much like that with me. I remember sitting there being very frigidity and she said, ‘Hey are you nervous? Don’t worry — my character on this show has been around.’ She was just really comforting, supportive and cool. It really helped me,” Hough said.

Perhaps bigger Derek Hough news was revealed today, and fans are pretty happy about it. According to The Orlando Sentinel, Derek has been paired with Sadie Robertson for next week’s switch-up on Dancing with the Stars. Fans were able to vote for which pro they wanted to dance with which celebrity for one week, and Sadie was chosen to dance with Derek. Their performance is highly anticipated, as Hough is expected to step out of the box (though not really, because he can’t!) and do something incredible with the 16-year-old Duck Dynasty star.

Fresh off his debut on @Nashville_ABC who better for @derekhough to dance with than @sadierob? #DWTS #GMADancing pic.twitter.com/ECIVSDJrsP

— Official DWTS (@DancingABC) October 9, 2014

The other match-ups are as follows:

Alfonso Ribeiro and Cheryl Burke dancing flamenco.

Jonathan Bennett and Peta Murgatroyd dancing the jitterbug.

Tommy Chong and Emma Slater dancing the mambo.

Bethany Mota and Mark Ballas dancing hip-hop.

Janel Parrish and Artem Chigvintsev dancing burlesque.

Antonio Sabato Jr. and Allison Holker dancing Bollywood.

Lea Thompson and Val Chmerkovskiy dancing Broadway.

Michael Waltrip and Witney Carson dancing disco.

Basically, Derek Hough and Mark Ballas switched partners, which is kind of cool because the two pros have similar styles, and they will likely work really well with their new partners. Ballas will dance with YouTube sensation Bethany Mota, who has been wowing the crowd week after week… and no, she’s not dating Hough, according to The Inquisitr.

There weren’t any super surprising match-ups for next week, and fans are really excited to see how the stars dance with their new pros. Some will do really well, and some won’t… so we’ll see how it all shakes out on Monday night.

As for who is going home next? Some say that it’s Jonathan Bennett’s time… and others believe Michael Waltrip will dance his last dance. Who do you think will be eliminated next week?

[Photo courtesy of ABC/Mark Levine]