The creative team behind Dolly Parton's upcoming Broadway production has shared some of the Queen of Country's final words of wisdom.
At Variety's "Business of Broadway" event in New York City on Oct. 5, several collaborators on "Dolly: A True Original Musical" revealed what the "9 to 5" singer told lead producer Adam Speers and director Bartlett Sher about 10 days before her death on Aug. 25.
"The last conversation that Bart and I had with her, which was about 10 days before she passed," Speers said. "She was very open with us both: 'You’ve got to keep going! This is the show that I want to be on Broadway!'"
Speers said his fellow musical co-writer, Maria S. Schlatter, spoke frequently with Parton in the months before the country music legend's
death to prepare for the show, which begins performances Dec. 7 and officially opens Jan. 19.
Actor Carrie St. Louis, one of three performers playing Parton, said the Grammy winner was "very, very involved" in the production, adding, "She was the first person in the building in the morning and the last person to leave."
"On every break, you’d think she might go out and, I don’t know, attend to the 100 million other things that she was doing, but no: She would walk around the room and speak to every actor that was there, one-on-one," St. Louis said. "If people were playing the guitar, she’d start jamming and singing with them."
Parton, who died after a brief battle with cancer, oversaw both the upcoming Broadway show and the 2025 version of "Dolly: A True Original Musical," which premiered at Belmont University’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville.
'Dolly' director teases Parton's new song 'Mountain Girl'
Sher also discussed that Parton wrote a song for the show titled "Mountain Girl."
The Tony-winning director discussed how Parton crafted over 10,000 songs in her career, adding, "She wrote a song every morning when she prayed."
"She had a whole system where she would take them to her team, and they’d record them right there, or she’d call them up and say, 'Meet me at the studio,' and they’d go right in and record them," he said.
Speers shared that Parton once told him that "Every night when she went to bed, the world was a slightly different place for her being in it."
The musical will follow three stages of Parton's life, played by St. Louis, along with actors Katie Rose Clarke and Norah Nunes. The cast also includes Gabriel Ebert, who portrays Parton's early music collaborator, Porter Wagoner, and John Behlmann, who plays Carl Dean, Parton’s longtime husband of nearly six decades who died in 2025.
"I don’t think I ever really stopped being nervous to sing in front of her," Clarke said. She recalled apologizing after once messing up the lyrics to "Jolene," to which Parton told her, "That’s okay, you’re doin’ great!"
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dolly Parton's Broadway team reveals advice she gave 10 days before death
