AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Yes, the legendary singer-songwriter, country superstar Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, surrounded by her loved ones, 80 years old, reportedly battling cancer, was laid to rest in a private burial Friday. News of Parton’s death sparked tributes around the world, honoring a musical legacy that spanned decades. Dolly Parton won multiple Grammys, numerous other awards. She also starred in the 1980 film 9 to 5, yes, with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.

I spoke with Jane Fonda this weekend behind the stage at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, where she was being honored and has a new film, Gaslit. I asked her about her relationship with Dolly Parton and the film 9 to 5.

JANE FONDA: So, this is how — this is how 9 to 5 came to be what it was. Back in the '70s, the anti-Vietnam War movement, our movement was called the Indochina Peace Campaign. And one of my colleagues was Karen Nussbaum, an activist from Boston, and her day job was organizing women office workers. And every time she'd see me, she’d tell me stories about the kind of things that women office workers had to put up with. And eventually, I said, “I’ve got to make a movie about this.” And it began as a kind of a dark — comedy, but dark.

And then, one day, I heard that Lily Tomlin was doing a one-woman show downtown called Appearing Nitely. And I had never seen her work. And I went down, and I saw her, 15 characters, and she embodied every one of them. I was smitten. I had never seen that kind of brilliance before.

And as I was driving home, I was enjoying myself. I had had a beer. I was driving, and I realized that I couldn’t make a movie about secretaries without Lily Tomlin being in it. I didn’t want to. And I turned on the radio, and it’s “Two Doors Down.” Dolly Parton is singing “Two Doors Down.” And I — suddenly, I saw Dolly. She’s a secretary. She’s typing. She can’t see her fingers. I thought, “Oh my god! Dolly, Lily and Jane.”

Needless to say, we had to approach it a little differently. It became an outright comedy and directed by Colin Higgins. And the rest is history. But that’s how it came about.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was it like working with Dolly? You gave her her first acting job, Jane.

JANE FONDA: That’s right. That’s right, I did. Well, first day of work, she shows up, and she’s memorized the entire script. She thought that she was supposed to learn it all. And then, one day, one day, about, I don’t know, three or four weeks into the shooting, she called me and Lily over during the lunch break. “Come here.” You know, she had nails like this. She got in the corner, and she said, “I think I’ve written the song.” And she starts singing “9 to 5,” using her nails as percussion instruments. And I just — Lily and I looked at each other. We both had the biggest goosebumps we’d ever had. And it was like, “Oh my god.”

DOLLY PARTON: [singing] Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’
Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’.

JANE FONDA: This is it! This is it! At least the song is going to be a hit. This is great. This is the anthem of the secretaries’ movement.

And Dolly, if she had gotten to the end of the day without her and her friends laughing so hard they had to cross their legs, then she would create a cause for laughter. She laughed all the time and made sure that everybody around her guffawed all the time. I know, because I spent 10 days with her on her tour bus, touring Appalachia, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, because I was — I was about to play a hillbilly, and Dolly’s the only hillbilly I knew, so she helped me find — find a hillbilly that I could base my character on.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’ve talked about how smart Dolly was. She often said, “I’m not insulted when someone says 'dumb blonde,' because I’m not dumb, and I’m not a blonde.”

JANE FONDA: I know. She wasn’t dumb. She had the ability, like X-ray vision, she could see through people to their essence. Whatever the outside was, she could see, good or bad, to the essence of a person, which is interesting, 'cause what she saw in me was a virgin. She told Lily. She said, “Jane's like a virgin.”

AMY GOODMAN: And you sang with her?

JANE FONDA: One of the ways that she helped me with a character of a — the hillbilly that I played in The Dollmaker, she invited me to Nashville, and then we spent 10 days driving through Appalachia and meeting people. But the first night I was in Nashville, she announced to me that I was coming with her to the Grand Ole Opry, and I was going to sing backup. I sang backup for Dolly at the Grand Ole Opry. Nobody knew who I was. This was 1977, I think, ’78. And yeah, I sang backup with Dolly.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk today, Dolly was just buried, but her — the legend of Dolly Parton will live on. What did she ultimately mean to you?

JANE FONDA: She meant — she meant love. She really did. She loved everyone. One day, we were on a photo session, me, Dolly and Lily. And for fun, we crossed our eyes, and they took a picture of us with our eyes crossed. And she got very upset. She said, “We never can show this to anybody.” She said, “It looks like we’re making fun. I have a relative who’s cross-eyed. I don’t ever want to see this picture.”

You know, she just — you know, I was — I was in deep hollows of Tennessee and Arkansas, where people lived in tar paper shacks with no electricity or running water. And she would come in in her full regalia. I never saw her without full regalia. And they loved her so much that they accepted my presence. And it was so clear that she absolutely respected them. That was why there was so much love. She never played down. She never — she always was pulled together. She was always who she was, out of respect for her fans. She taught me the importance of acknowledging and respecting fans.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, would you call Dolly a feminist?

JANE FONDA: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, she knew from the get-go who she was. She knew that people would make fun of who she was because of how she looked. And so, she did it first. And she did it so smart. And she was always in charge of her life. She was always in charge of her talent and her business and her career. It came from her. So, yes, she was in charge of her life. She was a feminist.

AMY GOODMAN: Jane Fonda, thanks so much.

AMY GOODMAN: The legendary actor and activist Jane Fonda, speaking about Dolly Parton. They starred together in the film 9 to 5 with Lily Tomlin. Dolly Parton was laid to rest next to her husband Carl Dean in a private burial on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee. Jane Fonda’s new film is Gaslit. We’ll talk more about that in the coming weeks.

And that does it for today’s show. A very happy birthday to Hany Massoud. I’ll be at the Firehouse Cinema at DCTV in Manhattan today for the Q&A after the 3:30 screening of the documentary Runa Simi. On Saturday, September 5th, I’ll be in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Barrymore Theatre at 7:30 for a screening of Steal This Story, Please!, then in Chicago on Sunday. Check out democracynow.org. Special thanks to Mike Burke and Nicole Salazar. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.