Dolly Parton secretly helped put Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the air

April 24th 2020, 5:18pm

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Weird pop-culture connections crop up every so often that are so bonkers or off-the-wall, they prove the adage "reality is stranger than fiction". This includes things like David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing Christmas carols together, Lucille Ball being one of the driving forces behind STAR TREK, and the fact that Dolly Parton secretly produced BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, a show about

a long line of young women chosen for a specific mission: to seek out and destroy vampires, demons and other forces of darkness. Unlike her predecessors, Buffy establishes a group of supportive friends who aids her in her battles with evil, including Willow, Xander and Cordelia. Her battles with evil are frequent, since Sunnydale, where Buffy and friends live, sits atop a gateway to the realm of the demons.

Parton is of course not credited as a producer on the show itself (or it wouldn't have been a secret), but instead co-created Sandollar Entertainment with her friend and former business partner Sandy Gallin in 1986. Sandollar Entertainment then produced a variety of properties, including FATHER OF THE BRIDE, FLY AWAY HOME, and of course the original BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER film then subsequent TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.

In some ways, it's not so crazy that Parton would find some value in BUFFY, as it is about a strong woman overcoming perilous odds – something Parton herself had to contend with as a woman in the male-dominated field of country music. Good thing her and her company stuck to their guns as well, as otherwise BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER might've remained lost to film history (at most remembered as a failed attempt by Paul Reubens as a comeback from PEE-WEE) rather than the pop-culture phenomenon it is today.

Most recently, Parton's production company produced the Netflix anthology series DOLLY PARTON'S HEARTSRINGS, about