Dolly sang her song "From Here to the Moon and Back" on the May 28, 2012, episode of season eight of "The Bachelorette" on ABC. On the episode, she also lends her theme park Dollywood to the bachelorette, Emily Maynard and her date.
Dolly said of the episode,
“Being a part of 'The Bachelorette' at Dollywood and meeting Emily and her date was so fun,” she continued, “I’m just a big ole romantic anyway so we had the best time!”
Emily Maynard chose Dollywood because she loves Dolly,
“One of my favorite moments of my whole life, not just of being the bachelorette, was meeting Dolly Parton. I can’t even put into words how excited I was.”
In addition to her performance of "From Here to the Moon and Back" (originally from the "Joyful Noise" soundtrack), Dolly also performed a song she wrote especially for the show entitled "Love Will Find a Way." On the episode, she also has a girl-to-girl talk with Maynard about what she is looking for in a man.
Dolly starred in the Warner Brothers movie "Joyful Noise." In 2012, during a decade when small towns faced a variety of economic problems, Dolly felt it was high-time for a feel-good movie about "a little town that's going through their problems, like everyone is these days."
Dolly plays G.G. Sparrow in "Joyful Noise," which focuses on a choir member at odds with the choir’s current director, played by Queen Latifah, at a church trying to win a national choral singing competition.
She was particularly excited to work with Queen Latifah.
“I always thought it'd be fun to work with her because everybody just loves her. And she is so cool and she's so funny. We really get along great. There's a great chemistry, which we hoped there would be, and it really comes through. There's a lot of magic in it.”
Many of the funniest parts of the movie are verbal battles between Latifah and Dolly, filled with classic "Dollyisms" like "God didn't put plastic surgeons on earth to starve." Amid the humor, the movie underscores the prevailing theme that people need to come together during hard times.
Dolly wrote three songs for the movie-- "Not Enough," "From Here to the Moon and Back," and "He’s Everything."
