I don’t often get nervous interviewing people, but Dolly Parton was someone I’d idolised since I was a child, driving my family crazy with off-key renditions of “9 to 5” and “Jolene”. Alongside my grandma and Shania Twain, she was one of the three big role models in my life. She was the queen of country music and so much more: a pioneer, a business genius, an exceptional songwriter and storyteller, a producer, a benefactor… in short: a one-of-a-kind woman. As someone who has often been made to feel as though I am “too much” – something I know many women will relate to – Parton seemed to exist to tell you to be more.
So in 2023, when I finally got the email that I had 40 minutes with her, after around three years of hounding her poor publicist, my heart flipped. Parton was notoriously tricky to interview – a mastermind when it came to dancing around a question she didn’t care for. But the moment she answered the call, that famous southern trill coming out of a black video screen, she made me feel like we were old friends. “How do you pronounce your name, darlin’?” she asked. I told her “Ro-sheen”, and that actually my university friends used to sing it to me to the tune of her most famous song, “Jolene”. She burst out laughing. “Well of course!” And then she began to sing. “Ro-sheen, Ro-sheen, Ro-sheen, Ro-sheeeen.”
