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For Dolly Parton, spirituality is nothing to take lightly.
The country music superstar has often spoken out about her faith over the years, but in a conversation with famed celebrity interviewer Lawrence Grobel, Parton revealed just how intensely she feels about the topic.
Grobel, who has interviewed and written about a number of celebrities over his decades-long career, recently shared some diary entries with Vanity Fair – many of them describe conversations he’s had with Parton, who he first met in 1978.
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Dolly Parton once told celebrity interviewer Lawrence Grobel that she believed Charles Manson would steal his soul were he to interview him. (Getty Images)
The two became friends, and in 1981, after he was presented with an opportunity to interview notorious serial killer Charles Manson, he asked Parton for her thoughts on the matter, since he’d been having trouble deciding whether he wanted to go through with it.
“I think he’d steal your soul,” she told him, per Grobel’s diary entry. “I can’t even look at a picture of him.”
Charles Manson at California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California, in August 1980. (Albert Foster/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
She told him that if he were to interview Manson, “I know I wouldn’t want to have much to do with you.”
The “Jolene” singer told Grobel that he “wouldn’t make a difference” by interviewing Manson because any attention the story got would go to the infamous killer, who was convicted in 1971 of the murders of seven people.
“I know it’s an amazing story,” she said, “but being the way we are, you and me, with the wonderful, pure force in you, just one minute with him could destroy all that we can be about. That’s how spirits work. You’d have to be brave to deal with him, and I know you are, but it’s something you don’t tempt God with. I’d be afraid it would get to me.”
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Dolly Parton has said her faith has always been important to her. (Mark Seliger/Getty Images)
Grobel wrote that Parton had told him that “this devil has come up between us,” referring to Manson, and that she said that if he did choose to do the interview, “You and me would be more like in a battle and I’d be looking at you differently, because it would change you and you may not even know it. The darkness is something not to get involved with.”
The author ultimately declined the interview, and in his diary, he wrote that Parton “pretty much made my decision for me.”
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“No candy if I play with the devil,” he remarked.
While the cult leader wasn’t known to worship Satan as some people believed, he did invoke some Satanic imagery in public statements he made.
Charles Manson is escorted to court for a preliminary hearing on December 3, 1969, in Los Angeles, California. (John Malmin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
At one point during his trial, Manson arrived to court with a shaved head, declaring, “I am the devil, and the devil always has a bald head.” At a 1986 parole hearing, he said, “From behind the time locks of courtrooms and from the worlds of darkness, I did let loose devils and demons with the power of scorpions to torment.”
Grobel previously recounted the story of Parton’s concerns about Manson on his website in 2017. There, he wrote that Parton was surprised that he had even needed to think about whether he wanted to do the interview, calling Manson “evil incarnate.”
He remembered her saying, “And to tell you the truth, that you even have to think about this concerns me.”
Dolly Parton poses for a portrait session in 1978 in Los Angeles, California. (Harry Langdon/Getty Images)
He also said that following the conversation, the country legend “kept her distance” from him.
Parton has long been open about her beliefs, telling Fox News Digital in 2023 that she asks God to keep “the right people” in her life and to take “the wrong ones” out of it.
“My faith impacts everything that I do because I do believe that, through God, all things are possible,” she said at the time. “And so I always ask God to bless everything that I do and the people that I work with and to bring all the right things and right people into my life and to take the wrong ones out.
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“So, I try to just live through love as much as I can. And so I just think that my spirituality has been a guiding light in my life and my strength, really, in my creative energy. And my spiritual energy has really been a great force to keep me going all these years and still being productive.”
Dolly Parton said that it’s important to her to be open about her faith. (David Crotty/Patrick McMullan)
Earlier this month, Parton appeared on Khloé Kardashian’s “Khloe in Wonder Land” podcast, where she admitted that people have told her that she shouldn’t speak so much about her faith.
“I said, ‘Well, yes I should,’” she told Kardashian. “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just telling you what makes me work, what I believe.”
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She said that if God can “shine through” her to other people, that’s good enough for her.