Here’s a fun one that a lot of fans still don’t know: Dolly Parton was a producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not in name — her credit never appeared on screen — but she had a very real hand in getting the show made.
It came up again recently when Sarah Michelle Gellar appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy asked her about it directly. SMG confirmed it all: “Yes, little known fact, the legend Dolly Parton was a producer. And, you know, we never saw her. We’d get Christmas gifts in the beginning that would have our name, and I’d think ‘She doesn’t know who I am.’ And then one day, somebody asked her about it, and she complimented the show and my performance. And I was like, ‘Oh, I can die now! Dolly Parton knows who I am and thinks I’m good.'”
The connection goes back to the 1992 film. Dolly Parton and her producing partner Sandy Gallin co-founded Sandollar Productions in 1986, and it was Sandollar that produced the original Buffy movie. When the TV series came about, Sandollar Television stayed on as one of the producing companies — which is how Dolly’s involvement carried over, even if her name wasn’t in the credits.
The person who actually made the TV show happen was Gail Berman, who was an executive at Sandollar at the time. She was the one who pushed to bring Buffy from the big screen to television. Berman and Sandy Gallin were both credited as producers, but Dolly quietly stayed in the background.
There’s a lovely postscript to all this. In 2016, Gail Berman told the New York Times that after she left Sandollar in the late ’90s, Dolly took her to lunch — having found out that Berman had been paid less in Buffy royalties than her male counterparts. Dolly personally handed her a cheque to make it right. Iconic behaviour, frankly.
Dolly herself has spoken warmly about the show too, saying on Watch What Happens Live: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a wonderful little show. I was very, very proud to be part of that.”
And if you want one more piece of trivia to take away: Buffy Summers and Dolly Parton share the same birthday — January 19th. Make of that what you will.
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