In a resurfaced interview from 2013 that surged in views after her death, the ever-cheerful Dolly Parton revealed she once suffered a serious period of depression that even had her contemplating ending her own life.
She went into detail about the dark phase in a 2013 profile on “60 Minutes Australia.” The “Me and Little Andy” songwriter explained, “I went through a bad period of time back in the ’80s when I was going through the change, I was having some female problems, I was having some family problems, some emotional problems. And I was overweight. And I didn’t feel good about myself at all.”
“So I got myself in a pretty bad bind. And I understood at that moment how people do get on drugs, and how people do get on alcohol, and how people can commit suicide. I didn’t do that because I still kept praying. I still kept holding onto God and hanging on to my friends. But it went through my mind.”
Dolly Said Career Ups & Downs Never Hit Her as Hard as Other Problems
When asked if her depression was tied to suffering a dip in country radio airplay, she assured the interviewer it was not. “I never cared about that. No business thing has ever been able to get me that depressed.” She said she gets more “angry” than depressed about career woes. The interviewer may have been referencing the fact that several country radio stations boycotted certain songs of hers in the ’70s such as “Touch Your Woman” and “The Bargain Store” for their lyrics that were considered suggestive in the times.
To get her truly down, Dolly said it has to be “something very personal to ever get me to that. Either family, or some emotional thing.” She revealed at her lowest, which she compared to a “middle-aged crisis,” she even considered ending her own life before quickly telling herself, “Nah, I ain’t gonna do that.”
As of the 2013 interview, she believed it was “a thing God meant for me to go through so that I could completely feel for other people about everything,” and added, “I needed to know how everybody feels. So I have been everywhere.”
She also dove into more detail about how her cherished family’s troubles tended to affect her, saying, “My family problems cause me a lot me a lot of stress. But everybody’s does. I worry about if somebody in my family’s going through a divorce, or if they’re having a hard time, I’m having a hard time. I care too much.
Dolly Was Interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1982 Amid Career Frustrations & Body Image Struggles
Dolly allowed Barbara Walters into her home for a vulnerable interview even amid the rough patch she was facing.
“That’s one of the biggest mistakes people can make about the stars. The fact that they deny them a right to be human.” She added that filming “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” which hit theaters the same year of the interview, was a “very draining, very stressful thing.” She said she grappled with a “moral issue of whether or not to do it, being from a very religious family. Despite the less than stellar reviews, she felt he acting was “as good as I could do.”
At the time, she said she’d resolved to take better care of herself and “really enjoy the simple things, rather than just going full blast.”
She also told Walters, who first famously grilled her about her exaggerated looks in 1977, that she felt she “could get away with less, but I like more,” and wouldn’t be simplifying her image any time soon.
