First ‘My Kind of Country’ Trailer From Apple TV+ Has Mickey Guyton, Orville Peck, Jimmie Allen Pushing Diverse Outsiders Toward Nashville

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The upcoming Apple TV+ competition series “My Kind of Country,” executive-produced by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon, is not just going to be a genre-specific knockoff of “American Idol” or “The Voice,” it’s clear from a first trailer released Friday. (Watch the new preview, below.) Fostering inclusiveness of every sort looks to be as high on the agenda as finding unknown talent, as is made apparent not just from the YouTube teaser but the previously known trio of celebrity talent scouts — Jimmie Allen, Mickey Guyton and Orville Peck — plus a just-released rundown of the dozen competing aspirants. “The people that i love in country music, they don’t look like me,” one contestant, Camille Parker, a Black woman from North Carolina, is seen as saying. “I’m ready to show people what they’ve been missing.” Actually, viewers of the series may already have an idea of what the genre is missing, thanks to a star trio at the show’s center that represent the rare outliers that have found success in the genre.

Allen and Guyton are two of the biggest Black artists in mainstream country, and while Peck exists more on the fringes of the mainstream — he literally wears fringe over his lower face, an outsider look that still hasn’t caught on on the Row — he has made inroads with some middle-of-the-road fans as well as the enthusiastic support he gets from progressive fans as still one of the few prominent gay men claiming the genre as their own. “My mask allows me to be more vulnerable and share my perspective as a gay country artist,” Peck says in the trailer — even as he may surprise some of his own fans by showing off more of his face than he has in the past.