Dolly Parton says she and her team are in early talks with companies that produce avatar performances, as she continues working through health issues that have sidelined several appearances this year.
According to Billboard, Parton told People magazine in an interview published Friday that the avatar performances are still in the early stages of development and she did not describe them in detail. The interview came after a string of missed and virtual-only appearances throughout 2025 and 2026.
Parton connected her current health struggles to a period of grief following the death of her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who died in March 2025 at 82 after nearly 60 years of marriage. "I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn't pay attention to when I was watching over Carl," she told People.
She framed the stretch as difficult but not the first time she had faced health setbacks. "It's not like I haven't been through hard times with my health," she said, recalling being "down for several months with female issues" in the early 1980s.
She also spoke about how public attention on her condition feels different now than it did in earlier decades. "I think because we live in a 24/7 world with social media, everything gets magnified in ways it wasn't years ago. I used to joke that I was the Queen of the Tabloids, but now I guess I can say I'm the Queen of Social Media AI! Seriously, though, even though I'm still healin', I'm still workin'."
Parton postponed a planned Las Vegas residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, first pushing December 2025 dates to September 2026 before canceling the run entirely in May. She appeared only virtually for several 2026 engagements, including the Academy of Country Music's Poet's Award at the ACM Honors and the dedication of Dollywood's new NightFlight Expedition ride on August 14.
She has not toured traditionally since 2016. In March, at her first in-person public appearance of 2026, she told a Dollywood crowd she had been "worn down and worn out" from grief and needed to rebuild herself "spiritually, emotionally and physically," while maintaining that her health issues hadn't slowed her down.
