Dolly Parton was thrilled to finally meet Jennifer Aniston's dog, but didn't appreciate the actress barking orders at her.
The actress told Dolly she'd named her pet after the country star years ago and so when it came time for the ladies to get together to work on new movie Dumplin' the Jolene singer couldn't wait to get to know the pooch, who turned out to be a real sweetheart.
"When I first met her (Aniston)... I was in a restaurant with my manager, Sandy Gallin, and she came over and introduced herself. This was a few years ago. She said, 'I love your music and I have a little dog and I named her Dolly Parton'. I said, 'I'm guessing that's a compliment?'
"She said that the dog was blonde and she's little. When I went over to Jennifer's house when we first started talking about doing the movie I said, 'Is Dolly Parton still around?' She was, and this beautiful blonde dog came into the room."
But the human Dolly was a little confused when her hostess kept yelling her name and asking her not to pee in the house.
"I thought it was funny with me there and Jen's saying to the dog, 'Dolly, get your bone. Dolly, don't pee on the rug!'" Parton chuckles.
Dolly encouraged Jennifer to sing on the Dumplin' soundtrack and admits recording with some of her favourite singers, young and old, was a real treat.
"I did a song with Sia, called Here I Am, and Elle King and I did Holding Onto You, which are old songs that came from my old catalogue, back when I was a young girl. We reworked them and they came out really good.
"One of my favourite things on the whole album was I got to sing with Mavis Staples... I got to sing with all these young girls and I was honoured that I could sing with them and kind of stay up to date. So I said, 'Can I pick somebody I want?' So I wrote a song, called Why, that reminds of the old songs the Staples family used to sing.
"I said, 'Can somebody find Mavis Staples for me?' And they said, 'Oh, she's old! She may not be still alive'. I said, 'Trust me, I'm old too and still working, so she's somewhere working'. Sure enough they looked her up and she was in Europe on tour."
