{"id":605561,"date":"2026-08-26T21:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T21:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/605561\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T21:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T21:46:17","slug":"affairs-drugs-you-could-ask-dolly-parton-about-anything-and-get-a-laugh-just-stay-away-from-politics-dolly-parton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/605561\/","title":{"rendered":"Affairs? Drugs? You could ask Dolly Parton about anything and get a laugh. Just stay away from politics \u2026 | Dolly Parton"},"content":{"rendered":"

The great privilege of my kind of journalism is to get the chance to meet extraordinary people \u2013 some famous, many not \u2013 and very occasionally that person is beyond extraordinary. Dolly Parton<\/a>, you may not be surprised to learn, was one of them. I\u2019ve only come across it a handful of times. It has nothing to do with extreme fame \u2013 I\u2019ve met plenty of A-listers who are dead behind the eyes. It\u2019s not charm or extroversion either, nor beauty, and it\u2019s not what we\u2019d call \u201cstar quality\u201d because it\u2019s less showy than that. It\u2019s almost indescribable, but \u201cluminous\u201d probably comes closest. I think it\u2019s partly innate \u2013 God-given, Parton might have said \u2013 but it also comes from living with humility, gratitude and humour. Parton was luminous, and it wasn\u2019t just the rhinestones.<\/p>\n

The cliche that you should never meet your heroes because you\u2019ll only be disappointed only stands if you think famous people have somehow transcended the deep character flaws that make the rest of us human. Everyone has off days, or off years. Still, I\u2019d been slightly dreading interviewing Parton. The machinery that surrounds a superstar interview \u2013 the holding rooms, the allotted time slots, the officious publicists \u2013 is designed to be intimidating, and it was all present on that autumn day in 2023. And then it was just Parton and me in a London hotel room, borderline uncomfortably close on a sofa, but unusually, no publicist sitting in, taking notes.<\/p>\n

\"DollyDolly Parton: why the world loved the queen of country – The Latest<\/p>\n

She was funnier than I expected, and warmer. Parton\u2019s artifice \u2013 the look, the folksiness, the ready quips \u2013 was clearly part of her armour. You can deflect any tricky question, or criticism, with a well timed boob joke. But somehow it didn\u2019t feel fake. It was her creation, but it was still her. I had no illusions I\u2019d get to the real Parton, whatever that was, in our hour together \u2013 she even went to bed with her makeup on, she said, because she didn\u2019t want to go to bed \u201clooking tacky\u201d for her husband.<\/p>\n

Certain things don\u2019t make it into interviews because written down they look trite, or lose power, but re-reading my transcript, I think I underestimated how spiritual Parton was. \u201cYou need to believe in something bigger than yourself,\u201d she said. \u201cYou need to believe in at least a higher power, the higher wisdom, whether you call it nature or whatever, to get you out of yourself.\u201d She would often break into reciting her lyrics (\u201cWhatever you are, be that \/ Whatever you do, do that \/ Everything else is just an act\u201d) which, in person, felt like being preached to by a beatific being.<\/p>\n

She could deal, with humour and grace, with the sort of questions other celebrities \u2013 or at least their PRs \u2013 would throw you out for. Had she or her husband had affairs? \u201cIf there [were], we don\u2019t know about it.\u201d Had she ever been tempted? \u201cI didn\u2019t say I\u2019d never been tempted,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI said I\u2019m married, not dead. Nor blind.\u201d We were meeting partly to discuss her book about fashion, and she\u2019d written about partying at Studio 54: how many drugs had she taken? Nothing hard, she said. \u201cI don\u2019t really want anything to change me. I don\u2019t want to mess with my brains.\u201d It didn\u2019t make my piece<\/a> \u2013 even with follow-up questions, her deflection was too practised, her answers too opaque. It\u2019s more an illustration that she was game.<\/p>\n

\"HowHow Dolly Parton\u2019s glamorous career transcended stereotypes \u2013 video obituary<\/p>\n

The only thing that was off-limits was her politics. Much as I admired her, I thought this was Parton\u2019s weak spot. Her apolitical stance seemed, to me, about protecting her career, her money. If you\u2019re political, she said, \u201cyou\u2019re gonna lose half your audience. I\u2019ve got as many Democrats, as I do Republicans as fans, and I\u2019m not going to insult any of them because I care about all of them.\u201d It was the same reason she didn\u2019t describe herself as a feminist, she said \u2013 she didn\u2019t want to alienate men.<\/p>\n

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I needled her (she remained good-humoured) because it seemed a cop-out \u2013 this was 2023, and life had become frightening and intolerable for many people. Tennessee, her home state, had not long banned abortion in almost all cases. At what point does silence, given her platform, start looking like complicity? \u201cI have my own opinion about everything,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t have to march in the streets for it, I don\u2019t have to insult other people for it. I don\u2019t think that makes me a hypocrite. I think it makes me a loving, caring human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years on I\u2019ve softened towards Parton\u2019s refusal to add to the noise, to label herself, to take sides, to inevitably alienate and polarise and condemn. Deeds not words. Parton\u2019s deeds \u2013 living as a feminist, if not calling herself one, and her philanthropy, and of course her music \u2013 speak for themselves. I had it for an hour in that hotel room, just the hack who happened to be chosen for that assignment, but we were all lucky to be touched by Parton\u2019s light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The great privilege of my kind of journalism is to get the chance to meet extraordinary people \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-605561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}