Dolly Parton Says She’s Exploring ‘Avatar Performances’

Dolly Parton says she and her team are in early talks with companies that produce “avatar performances,” as she continues working through health issues that have sidelined several appearances this year.

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“I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over Carl,” Parton, 80, told People in an interview published Friday (Aug. 21), referring to her late husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who died in March 2025 at 82 after nearly 60 years of marriage.

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She said the avatar performances, which she did not describe in detail, are still in the “early stages of development.”

Parton framed the current stretch as difficult but not unprecedented. “It’s not like I haven’t been through hard times with my health,” she said, recalling being “down for several months with female issues” in the early 1980s.

She added that public scrutiny feels more intense now than it once did: “I think because we live in a 24/7 world with social media, everything gets magnified in ways it wasn’t years ago. I used to joke that I was the Queen of the Tabloids, but now I guess I can say I’m the Queen of Social Media AI! Seriously, though, even though I’m still healin’, I’m still workin’.”

The interview followed a string of missed appearances. Parton postponed a planned Las Vegas residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, first pushing the December 2025 dates to September 2026 before canceling the run entirely in May.

She also appeared only virtually for several 2026 engagements, including the Academy of Country Music’s Poet’s Award at the ACM Honors and, most recently, the dedication of Dollywood’s new NightFlight Expedition ride on Aug. 14.

Parton has not toured traditionally since 2016. In March, at her first in-person public appearance of 2026, she told a Dollywood crowd she had been “worn down and worn out” from grief and needed to rebuild herself “spiritually, emotionally and physically,” while maintaining that her health issues hadn’t slowed her down.