Jason Kempin/Getty Images for NetflixIt’s been nearly fifty years since Dolly Parton topped the country chart with “Jolene.” But on Friday, she puts a new spin on the classic about the other woman, as one of the episodes of her new Netflix anthology, Heartstrings, is based on the song.
“We didn’t know how to handle ‘Jolene,'” Dolly confesses. “That was kind of the tricky one, because it’s such an iconic song and everybody thought that it was gonna just be about my husband and me and a jealous trip and all.”
“But actually they only covered the fact that… there was this beautiful girl that worked at the bank and my husband had a crush on her,” she adds.
Dolly herself co-stars in the episode alongside actress, singer, and dancer Julianne Hough.
“I think Julianne… did a beautiful Jolene, such a beautiful job singing, performing,” Dolly tells ABC Audio. “We couldn’t have found a better Jolene.”
Brad Paisley‘s wife, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, plays a woman who befriends Jolene, and eventually discovers she has a secret.
“I found it intriguing that the writer decided to take it and let Jolene be seen as who Jolene is and why Jolene, like in the song, would go out and steal someone’s husband, someone’s man,” Dolly explains. “She just didn’t have a good opinion of herself, and how she had been kind of abused, you know, and all that.”
“So I like the turn that it took, and I’ll be curious to see, I’m sure… some people will love that and some people, you know, [will] wonder why we went that way,” Dolly says of the twist.
All eight installments of Heartstrings will be available on Netflix on Friday, including episodes based on “Two Doors Down,” “Down from Dover,” “Cracker Jack,” and more.
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