Dolly Parton On Rumors Of Her Death: ‘Here I Am!’

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Dolly Parton,Country Music,Celebrities

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Dolly Parton promotes her new musical, ‘9 to 5’
Access Hollywood
Dolly Parton
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Dolly Parton at a news conference for the new musical ‘9 To 5’ in New York
Composed by AccessHollywood.com
Dolly Parton

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FIRST PUBLISHED: September 19, 2008 4:23 PM EDT
LAST UPDATED: September 19, 2008 4:34 PM EDT

LOS ANGELES, Calif. --

Dolly Parton’s big screen 80’s comedy “9 to 5” has been turned into an even bigger musical stage show and to promote the project, which opens this Saturday in LA, the country legend chatted recently with Access Hollywood about the challenges in getting the show to the stage. But one challenge that she didn’t see coming? – reports last month that she had passed away!

“I was asleep. I was at the lake house with my husband and it came across Fox News that I had died of a heart attack,” Dolly told Access. “My husband comes and wakes me up saying, ‘Wake up! You’re dead! You need to call some people to let them know its not so!’”

The false report that Dolly had died spread like wildfire through the Internet on August 22.

“But here I am,” she laughed. “I guess you can see that it wasn’t true. I don’t know how those things get started.”

The alarming Dolly news caused chat rooms to blow up. That night, Dolly’s rep quickly denied the story to Access.

Dolly’s heard these rumors before, but this time it hit too close to home.

“I think its terrible that people would stoop so low that they’d scare people,” she said. “They called my family back home — my brothers and sisters, everybody was calling, some thinking it was true. There’s some sick people out there and I ain’t one of them.”

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