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I Interviewed Dolly Parton for ‘Playboy.’ Then She Became My Friend
A veteran celebrity journalist recalls the icon’s humor and generosity — and their touching final conversation
Dolly Parton attends the 53rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 1981. Parton’s theme song to the movie “9 to 5,” in which she costarred, was nominated for best original song.
NewsBase/AP Photo
In my 30-plus years as a celebrity interviewer for Playboy, I spent many hours in the presence of icons, including Marlon Brando, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Luciano Pavarotti, and it was always a challenge to get them to open up about their personal lives. But with Dolly Parton, it was different. Dolly was sunshine, a journalist’s dream: honest, open and downright fun to be with. When I told her I had spent nearly nine months interviewing Streisand, Dolly’s eyes brightened, and she quipped, “We could have a baby if we started now.” That was Dolly.
I remember the first time we met in her uncluttered L.A. apartment in 1978. I was alone, looking at a small trampoline in the corner of the room, when she appeared, saying, “Well, nice to meetcha,” and hugged me. I lost my breath. She had overwhelmed me. “You want to know about that thing,” she said, eyeing the trampoline. “I tried using it, but two things kept getting in the way when I bounced.” She laughed, I laughed, and I could breathe again. “I like to get the boulders in the room out of the way, so we can have a serious conversation,” she explained.
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One of my first questions was about her decision to appear on the cover of Playboy in a revealing bunny costume. She said she’d worried at first that some of her more religious fans might be offended. “Then I thought that it isn’t something I should be ashamed of,” she added. “I mean, who else but Dolly Parton should be on the cover of Playboy?”
We talked for five hours that day, and she invited me to tour with her for a week through Virginia and West Virginia. I got to see how her fans treated her like royalty, how children waited for a hug or an autograph, and how their fathers posed alongside her with silly grins on their faces. On the tour bus I would sit across from her as she talked about her life and dreams. As I recorded in the detailed journal I’ve kept all my life, I didn’t notice the passing scenery, because I couldn’t take my eyes off Dolly. She was mesmerizing, even when she reached under a table to get the chewing gum she’d stuck there before performing.
For the October 1978 cover of “Playboy” magazine, Parton dressed as a Playboy bunny.
Harry Langdon/Getty Images
The Playboy interview appeared in October 1978, but that wasn’t the last I heard from Dolly. She was a person who stayed in touch, and for the rest of her life she’d call me out of the blue once in a while. This has happened to me a few times with celebrities I’ve interviewed over long stretches of time, but I must admit that hearing from Dolly brightened my day and charged my spirits in a way I can’t explain.
In 1980, Dolly invited me to meet her at 20th Century Fox Studios, where she was filming 9 to 5 with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. After her day of shooting, we went for a drive in my little Fiat Spider with the top down, heading to Santa Monica and Malibu. I told her about a work of fiction I’d been writing, inspired by her, and she said, “Well, I’ll listen if you read it.”
“Can’t read while I drive,” I said.
“Well, then, how’d you like to be the first person to hear the song I wrote for the movie?”
“I’ll listen if you’ll sing,” I said.
Clicking her fingernails as percussion, she began singing, “Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen / Pour myself a cup of ambition….”
“I think you just wrote the national anthem for secretaries around the world,” I told her when she finished.
(From left) Lily Tomlin, Parton and Jane Fonda starred in the 1980 movie ”9 to 5.“
20th Century Fox Licensing/Courtesy Everett Collection
In February 1988, I met Dolly for lunch in West Hollywood to interview her for Redbook magazine. She looked different. Her waist was tiny; her face was sharper, more triangular; her nose seemed longer; her eyes were more prominent. She told me she’d never felt better, happier or more in control. We talked about her busy life, her TV variety show and the problems she had there, and a difficult period four years earlier, when she’d been ill with shingles and learned she could never have children. “I was so unhappy at that time, for about 18 months. I just couldn’t get myself together,” she told me. “It was the worst time ever in my life. I couldn’t even watch television. The starving children in Africa, the riots in India, the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. I couldn’t stand to see human suffering.”
“What can you do about the way the world is?” I asked her.
“I give what I can where I think it can do some good, but I don’t like to talk about it,” she said. And as we’ve all learned in the time since her death from cancer last week at the age of 80, she gave widely and generously, and usually without fanfare.
My heart always skipped a beat whenever I answered the phone and heard her soft voice. It was like speaking to an old friend, picking up where we left off as if there had been no years in between. Lately we’d been talking about the Broadway musical about her life, Dolly: A True Original Musical, that is set to premiere on her birthday, January 19, next year. There was a new hotel in Nashville that she was opening in October, with a Dolly museum inside it. She spoke about how pleased she was with the success of her Imagination Library, which has donated over 332 million books to children to encourage them to read.
Signed photo to Larry’s grandchild from Dolly.
Courtesy Larry Grobel
She asked me about my wife and the grandkids, and I told her that my 10-year-old granddaughter, Mika, had made drawings of Dolly and pinned them on her bedroom wall. (A few weeks later, Mika received a book and a signed photo from Dolly: “Your Jiji (Larry) tells me you are a star. I believe him.”) We discussed our families’ health challenges, and she talked about caring for her husband, Carl Dean, in his final years. Dean, who had been diagnosed with dementia, died in March 2025.
“This grieving thing is real,” Dolly told me. “I got myself out of whack. I let my immune system get down.” She had canceled concerts, she told me, because she was on a medication that made her dizzy, and she was afraid she’d fall if she wore high heels — and “I ain’t gonna work without my high heels.” Then she added, “Let’s keep in touch. You have my number and I have yours. Whenever you feel like talking, whatever’s on your mind, just call. And I’ll do the same.”
Parton greets fans at an in-store appearance at Peaches Records, in Atlanta, on May 3, 1977.
Tom Hill/WireImage/Getty Images
Through the years I knew Dolly, she often told me that she wanted me to write “the big book” about her, an authorized biography that, due to logistics, never came to pass. She mentioned the book in our last conversation, at the end of July, when she called me from Nashville to tell me she was “dealing with health issues” and added, “You’d better get your ass here soon if you wanna talk to me face-to-face.” Then, just before we hung up, in her typically flirtatious way, she said, “You know, I always had a crush on you.”
I could feel a smile spread across my face. Dolly always had a way of saying something unforgettable. Maybe she’d said the same thing to lots of other journalists, but it didn’t matter. Because the feeling was mutual, and I had the perfect response. “Well, you know, Dolly, I will always love you,” I told her.
And I meant it.
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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