It's been a good year to be Dolly Parton. She had a No. 1 country album, a sold out tour and a Christmas sequel to last year's "Coat of Many Colors" about her childhood in the Great Smoky Mountains on NBC.
The country superstar sat down with News4 last week -- before the wildfires started spreading -- at her Dollywood DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
“Well, it’s just the gift that keeps on giving, ain’t it,” she said about the song that inspired last year’s movie, the most watched broadcast TV movie in three years. "I think people related to that story. Everybody loves the rags to riches story, that Cinderella story, which this kind of was my life, kind of just showed a country girl and who I was."
Parton, who turns 71 in January, said she has no plans to slow down in 2017.
"We're coming up on a whole new year, and it's certainly going to be a year of change," she said.
That includes at least three new projects with NBC as part of a deal.
"One is probably going to be a Christmas special next year that I'm doing on NBC, a musical special," she said. "And so we sold 'Jolene' and 'Coat of Many Colors.' And I'm going to be doing some acting in some of these shows. And it depends on the success of 'Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love,' there's a possibility that we could do a series based on my life."
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With NBC’s recent interest in live musicals, the singer told News4 another possibility includes bringing her Broadway show, “9 to 5: The Musical,” based on the 1980 movie, to television viewers. The show ran on Broadway in 2009.
The country superstar has other hopes for the Great White Way, too.
“I’m eventually going to be doing my Broadway musical of my life story, sowe’ll probably get that in the works sometime this coming year,” she said.
The singer, who has released more than 40 albums in her career, also shared some words of hope with fans who might still be worried about the divisive election.
"We've got a new president coming in, and it’s scary to have this much change all of a sudden, but I think we're going to be great. We've always been great and we'll be greater still. I always say we're still America. We're never going to allow anything bad to ever happen to us. There's enough of us to make sure that doesn't happen."
Produced by Rick Yarborough.
