A guide to the ever-growing cast of characters on ‘Nashville’

ABC’s “Nashville” has one of the bigger casts in television, with a dozen regular characters and a handful of recurring guest stars — and it’s about to get even bigger.

Wednesday’s episode introduced three more recurring characters, just one week after Broadway actress Laura Benanti joined the cast as country singer Sadie Stone. The addition of all the new plotlines had some complaining on Twitter that the soapy show had gone too far:

For those struggling to keep track of all the “Nashville” faces, here’s a recap of the new faces who debuted Wednesday night.

Noah (Derek Hough)

The “Dancing With the Stars” pro is playing the leading man in the Patsy Cline biopic whom Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) meets when she flies to LA to do a screen test. The two have chemistry in-character, but when Noah tries to make a move after the camera stops rolling, Juliette shoots him down and makes a quick exit when her pregnancy nausea returns.

He persists, leaving Juliette a voice mail when she’s back in Nashville, but her heart is clearly still stuck on ex-boyfriend Avery (Jonathan Jackson), whom she now knows is the father of her unborn baby.

Kiley (Alexa PenaVega)

As if Gunnar (Sam Palladio) wasn’t already involved in a love triangle with girlfriend Zoey (Chaley Rose) and his ex Scarlett (Clare Bowen), now there’s a third potential romantic interest with the arrival of his first love, Kiley, in town. The former lovers are reunited at Barn-aroo, but the pairing clearly peeves Zoey when Gunnar is too busy chatting with Kiley to help with a hammered Avery.

Gunnar eventually confesses their romantic past to Zoey and says he wants her to like Kiley because she’s like family. But there’s clearly still a strong connection between the two, as seen when Gunnar visits Kiley at the diner where she works and confides in her tearily that his brother died.

Pam (Brette Taylor)

Luke’s (Will Chase) new backup singer proved herself to be anything but subtle, immediately setting her sights on his warm-up act Deacon (Charles Esten) and not relenting until she got him in bed. She initially introduces herself to Deacon and praises his album, but he rebuffs her invitation to grab a drink. Later, when Luke does a meet-and-greet with his label exec Jeff (Oliver Hudson) and Sadie (Benanti) onstage during Deacon’s sound check, he gets annoyed, which leads Pam to comment on how he’s cute when he’s angry.

When Rayna (Connie Britton) surprises Luke at their Hollywood concert, it’s too much for Deacon to take, and he angrily storms to his dressing room. Pam finds him out back at the hotel and makes a pass at him again. He tells her, “You must be the only person in the world who doesn’t know I’m in love with Rayna James.” She replies that it seems like Rayna is in love with someone else — which is finally enough to get Deacon to hook up with her.