Carly Pearce is having a full circle moment with Lucy Hale. Only ET was on the set of the 33-year-old country singer’s music video shoot for “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” which stars the Pretty Little Liars alum, Pearce’s longtime friend who she first met a decade ago when she served as the actress’ backup singer.
“I met Lucy on the set of her music video at the Grand Ole Opry, which is so insane. It was the first time I’d ever stepped on the stage,” Pearce told ET. “It freaked me out because I never wanted to stand on the stage until I was playing myself. Now I’m a member, which is wild. I remember just being really excited to be there because I was working a lot of odd jobs and was really sad and needed to fall back in love with music. She helped me do that.”
Pearce described that time in her life as “so fun,” much of which she credits to Hale, 34.
“I was in my early 20s and just thought I had totally made it,” she remembered. “It really did make me fall back in love with music, having somebody that was around my age that I could just go have fun with and be on a stage and get to be a part of a band that I love. We really had a wonderful time.”
“She didn’t even have to speak to me back then and she built a friendship with me very early on,” Pearce added of Hale. “She treats everybody like they’re her friend and I think if she can do it everybody should.”
Now, Pearce counts Hale as a “dear friend.”
“We’ve developed a really strong friendship and she’s been such a champion of mine and my music,” Pearce said of Hale, before sharing how she got her friend to star in her music video.
“I just asked her if she wanted to be in the video and have the biggest full circle moment ever and she so graciously said yes,” she said of the video, which also stars Shiloh Fernandez, whom Pearce said she’s “really excited” about.
“He looks like he stepped out of Yellowstone, so I’ll take that,” she quipped. “He’s killing it.”
As for the song itself, Pearce teamed up with another famous star — Chris Stapleton.
“I am so happy that I DM’d Morgane Stapleton so that she could get this song to Chris. I always joke and say, ‘You got to go to the wife go, to the one that really makes the decisions,'” she quipped of Stapleton’s longtime wife. “… I’ve had a lot of amazing collaborations. Chris Stapleton, to me, feels like the peak, so I may just hang up my hat after this one on collaborations.”
The song was worthy of the talent behind it, with Pearce telling ET, “All I’ve ever wanted to do was make music that people connected to and that they loved and that mattered. I think just to see what this song is already doing has felt so much like people understand who I am, they get the artist that I want to be, they care what I have to say.”
All of that, Pearce said, came across in the music video, which is out now.
“I feel like this story really needed to be told exactly how it was written, which is just that you can be in a relationship and co-exist, but I think the worst place that you can be in is when you are in a place of indifference,” she said. “The story visually comes to life in a way of just showing how distant you can get when you’re right next to each other.”
The success Pearce is seeing now allows her to look back fondly on those early days when she was Hale’s backup singer.
“It makes me emotional just to think about everything that has happened in my life since being a backup singer,” she said. “So many people told me that my career would be over if I went and did that. I’m so glad that I did, because I feel like she opened so many doors for me of people just being aware of me before I had any kind of artistry going or anything.”
“So now to see everything that’s happened, we’ve continued to be in each other’s lives, she’s championed me every single step of the way and vice versa,” Pearce added. “To get to come together and work together in these two roles it just is really, really special and probably the most special video I’ll ever do.”
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