ABC/Lou RoccoThis weekend, Dolly Parton presided over opening weekend at her East Tennessee theme park, as Dollywood opened its gates for its 2018 season.
With a sequel to 1980’s 9 to 5 in the works with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, there’s no slowing down for the Country Music Hall-of-Famer. In fact, she was busy working on another big screen project as she turned 72 on January 19.
“I was doing the music with [producer] Linda Perry, who’s doing the music for the Dumplin’ movie, the soundtrack, all the music for that,” Dolly reveals. “So we were in the studio, ’cause I got flowers on my birthday.”
Dolly’s doing much more than just helping with the music for the project. In fact, she’s the very inspiration for it.
“There was a little girl named Julie Murphy that wrote a book about a little girl with no confidence,” Dolly explains. “And she had loved my music and my sayings, and it kinda helped build her confidence. And… it was a New York Times bestseller. And then Jennifer Aniston adapted it for the movies, and she’s starring in it, and she’s producing it.”
Dumplin’ will include Dolly tunes, both old and new.
“I wrote some additional music for that,” she tells ABC Radio, “so a lot of my music is in that movie, and some new stuff I wrote. So I’m helping them promote that on the musical end.”
So far, we don’t know when Dumplin’ will be released, or when we’ll get to hear Dolly’s new music.
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