Kristin Chenoweth says she’s ‘ready’ to play Dolly Parton onscreen

Actress Kristin Chenoweth, left, wants to Dolly Parton. (Photo: Getty Images)

Kristin Chenoweth is very into the idea of playing country music icon Dolly Parton.

On Thursday, she retweeted the link to a story about Parton wanting her to portray her. “I’m ready Dolly,” she wrote.

Her tweet came a day after talk show Mr. Nashville Talks shared its February interview with Parton on Facebook. In it, the “Here You Come Again” singer had been asked if she’d made any progress on a project about her life. Parton answered that she had been working on a Broadway musical, then COVID happened, which changed her mind on how to tell her story.

“I do intend someday to be on Broadway, but I’m thinking now that I might do my life story as a feature, and maybe, possibly even, a musical feature,” she said. “And so I’m… we’re in talks about that.”

Parton was then asked whether she had someone in mind to star.

“No, not now, because it depends on when I get it done. Most of ’em age out,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to do this for years, and the people that I thought would… cause I have to have at least two, well, three Dollys, really. I have to have a little Dolly, we have to have the medium one and, now that I’ve lived long enough to be older, I might play myself as my older self. I don’t know. Anyhow, but there’s many ways to do it.”

However, in a December 2020 interview with Marie Claire, Parton was receptive when Chenoweth was suggested as the right fit.

“I love Kristin Chenoweth. She’s just absolutely fantastic,” Parton said. “Years and years ago, when I was going to do the Broadway musical — I never can get it to how I want it, but I’m still working on it. But I thought she’d be an ideal person to do that.”

Chenoweth is a Tony Award winner with more than 20 years of experience on the stage and in TV and film.

And she’s a huge fan of Parton.

“I was raised on country music and gospel music,” Chenoweth told NPR in September 2019. “There’s something about Dolly that — well, for everybody; not just me — that I have connected with. And when I first met her many, many years ago, she said, you’re me and — I’m like you, and you’re like me.”

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Chenoweth was doing that interview to promote her 2019 album For the Girls, which featured covers of songs from women she admired. Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” was one of them, and the singer herself joined her on the track. It was emotional for Chenoweth to hear it.

“When I heard it, I did the ugly cry,” she said. “I was in Atlanta, on set, and I’m bawling — bawling.”

In December 2021, she confirmed on The Kelly Clarkson Show that she still wanted the gig. She joked that she was only “lacking a couple things,” before doing an incredible impression of her idol.

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