A shocking interview has just resurfaced in which country music legend Dolly Parton revealed that she once pulled a gun on a man who thought she was a prostitute one night in New York City.
In a 1978 interview with Playboy, Parton talked about a terrifying experience she had with a friend during her first visit to New York City when she was only 21 years-old. Wanting to do something exciting, the singer and her friend went to “one of them slum areas” and snuck into a pornographic movie theater.
“We thought it would be somethin’ dirty enough to enjoy,” Parton recalled. “‘[W]e dared each other to do, so we went.”
The women quickly regretted this decision, as Parton said that the movie “got into the most gross things.” They eventually ran out of the theater, but since it was a Friday night, they were unable to get a cab. Parton and her friend were so naive at the time that they did not realize that when people saw two young ladies out in this area at that time of night, they would make assumptions about their intentions.
“At that time, we didn’t know that prostitutes ran in pairs in New York City for protection,” Parton explained. “All of a sudden, these men started approachin’ us on the street. They thought we were up for sale.”
The “Jolene” singer went on to admit that her “ridiculous” may have contributed to the men thinking she and her friend were prostitutes.
“I would look like a streetwalker if you didn’t know this was an image,” she said. “I’m sure we looked just like what they thought we were.”
When one of the men got particularly aggressive, Parton knew she was going to have to step up to defend herself and her friend.
“I was so scared,” she recalled. “[T]he man was “pullin’ at me, he was tryin’ to handle me, just maul me, the whole works … he just thought if he bargained long enough that I’d give in.”
“I was terrified, and I was mad too,” Parton added, saying that she began cursing at the man in the hopes of making him leave.
When nothing seemed to do the trick, Parton reached into her purse and took out a gun, which she said she “never traveled without.”
“I got my gun out of my pocketbook,” she said going on to say that she told the man, ‘‘If you put your hands on me one more time, I swear to God that I will shoot you.’ And I would have. I wouldn’t have shot him in the stomach or nothin’, I would have shot his feet off or shot at the ground.”
This experience was so traumatic that it made Parton hate New York City for years.
“It was [my first time in New York], and for years I thought I hated New York City for that very reason,” she said. “Since then, it has become one of my very favorite cities. I go back all the time, there’s great people there. It’s just that then I didn’t understand them and they sure didn’t understand me.”
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