Dolly Parton to be remembered at Dollyfest concerts in Nashville, London
Dolly Parton performs at Bournemouth International Centre, Sept. 6, 2011, in Bournemouth, England. (Harry Herd/WireImage via Getty Images)
Country music legend Dolly Parton will be remembered at two Dollyfest concerts in 2027, her estate announced Monday.
The concerts, billed as the “party of a lifetime,” will be held across two consecutive weekends in 2027 in Nashville and London, according to her estate.
The celebration was originally scheduled to take place in Nashville in January this year, according to the estate, and was intended to be a “multi-artist event” featuring Parton, who died on Aug. 25 at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer.
“Many people behind the scenes know that DOLLYFEST is a dream of Dolly’s that was intended to take place on her 80th birthday in Nashville,” Danny Nozell, Parton’s longtime manager, said in a statement Monday. “We had the venue booked and we had the announcement ready to go. And then, in August 2025, Dolly had to take a step back after her initial health challenges. A lot of people always say, WWDD (What Would Dolly Do?), and, well, at this moment, DOLLYFEST is WDWD (What Dolly Would Do!).”
“What Dolly started, we will ensure is brought to life,” Nozell added.
Exact dates for the two 2027 Dollyfest celebrations are forthcoming, Parton’s estate said, along with more information on who will be performing.
The upcoming celebrations were announced three days after Parton was laid to rest in a private memorial service in Nashville on Aug. 28, her niece Lainey Mae Parton shared in a social media post over the weekend.
Parton, who was preceded in death by her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, requested a private funeral, her nephew Bryan Seaver said in a video message announcing her death.
Parton was born one of 12 children in a small town in Tennessee and propelled herself to become one of the world’s most successful entertainers, releasing 50 albums and winning 11 Grammy Awards.
She took a step back from public appearances over the past year as she dealt with health issues, details of which she did not share publicly.
Just days before her death, Parton shared a statement with People saying she was taking time to address health issues she “didn’t pay attention to” prior to Dean’s death last year.
Parton’s last major in-person public appearance was in June, when she made a surprise appearance at the grand opening of a gas station and restaurant called Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop.
Emily Baldoni and Justin Baldoni attend the ‘It Ends With Us’ New York Premiere at AMC Lincoln Square Theater on August 6, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
Justin Baldoni and his wife, Emily Baldoni, are speaking publicly for the first time in nearly two years as the legal dispute between Baldoni and his former It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively continues.
In a joint video shared to Instagram on Wednesday, the couple said they had chosen not to speak publicly earlier while the legal process played out.
In April, a federal judge dismissed much of Lively’s case against Baldoni, including her claims that she was subjected to sexual harassment, but allowed her to pursue a retaliation claim against Baldoni’s public relations teams.
Baldoni, via his Wayfarer Studios production company, and Lively later agreed to settle but remain tied up in a court fight over legal fees.
“So we have not spoken publicly for the better part of the last two years and it’s not because we haven’t had anything to say because lord knows we have,” Justin Baldoni said in the video. “But it just felt like every time we went to make a video like this, we wanted to speak, something was telling us not to — it just didn’t feel like the right time.”
Emily Baldoni added, “And this feels like the moment.”
The couple said there is “so much to say” but that they were not going to say it all now.
“What does feel important is that we can genuinely say that we are sitting here today feeling immense gratitude for so many things and so many people and so many things that have happened to us,” Emily Baldoni said.
“Gratitude has saved us,” Justin Baldoni added.
Emily Baldoni said that gratitude “doesn’t negate the injustice and the pain that we have also felt in the last few years.”
“We’ve had to wrestle with so many things and try to understand so many things, like how could something like this even happen? Let alone disguise[d] as a fight for women,” she said.
Justin Baldoni said the couple chose not to contribute to “the noise” surrounding the case.
“We just wanted to let the justice system run its course,” he said.
Emily Baldoni added, “The truth and the facts have spoken for themselves. And here we are.”
Justin Baldoni said the family is continuing to recover from the experience.
“We are healing,” he said. “And if you’ve ever been through something traumatic, you know that healing isn’t linear. It looks different every day.”
He said the experience has helped the couple focus on “the kids, it’s our family, it is our friends, it’s our community … it’s our faith.”
Justin Baldoni also thanked supporters who stood by the family.
“There were so many of you who, when we didn’t have a voice, were our voice,” he said. “Thank you does not feel like enough.”
Emily Baldoni said the couple plans to continue focusing on their family.
“There is so much more to say, and that time will come. But for now, we are going to focus on continuing the healing and hanging out with our kiddos and enjoying life.”
The video comes days after attorneys for Lively said in a court filing that Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, owes the actress $7,495,526.87 in attorneys’ fees connected to the studio’s defamation lawsuit against her, which was dismissed in June 2025. According to the filing, Lively is also seeking $539,514.01 in costs and expenses related to the dismissed case.
The filing came after U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman denied Lively’s request for punitive damages but allowed her to seek attorneys’ fees under California Civil Code Section 47.1, a law designed to protect people who report sexual assault, harassment or discrimination from retaliatory defamation lawsuits.
The legal dispute between the former It Ends With Us co-stars began in December 2024, when Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of the film, which he also directed.
Lively also accused Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of attempting to orchestrate a smear campaign against her, allegations Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios have denied.
The two later filed competing lawsuits against one another. Baldoni accused Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, the couple’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, and others of extortion and defamation, among other claims. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case in January 2025.
Baldoni’s lawsuit was dismissed by Liman in June 2025. Earlier this year, the judge also dismissed most of Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni while allowing her retaliation claims against Baldoni’s public relations team to proceed.
In May, Baldoni, through Wayfarer Studios, and Lively agreed to settle their ongoing dispute. Liman ruled that Wayfarer Studios must pay Lively’s attorneys’ fees but denied Lively’s request for punitive damages. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
ABC News has reached out to representatives for Lively for comment on the Baldonis’ Instagram video.
Sadie Soverall as Percy Fraser, Matt Cornett as Sam Florek in ‘Every Year After.’ (Cate Cameron/Prime Video)
Less than a year after the beloved Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty wrapped, a new series is stepping in to deliver all the swoonworthy summer romance audiences have been yearning for.
Prime Video released all eight episodes of the seriesEvery Year After on Wednesday, starring Sadie Soverall and Matt Cornett. The streaming platform has described the new show as “the love story of the summer.”
The series follows Percy (Soverall) and Sam (Cornett), childhood best friends who fall in love over the course of six summers at Barry’s Bay, an idyllic lakeside town.
Ten years after their heartbreaking split, they are reunited when Percy returns to Barry’s Bay to attend the funeral of Sam’s mother.
“It’s a story that’s told over quite an incredible span of time,” Soverall told ABC News in an interview. “It follows them from the age of 13 to their mid-to-late 20s.”
Cornett added, “You get to see them grow together and then see their hardships that caused them to separate. And you see them come back together to try and regrow together.”
The series already has a loyal fanbase thanks to Carley Fortune’s New York Times bestselling novel Every Summer After, on which the show is based.
Going into the series, Cornett said that he wasn’t familiar with Fortune’s novel, but when he found out he booked the role of Sam, he said he went to the bookstore and saw the book displayed on one of the first tables in the shop.
“I was like, ‘OK, I guess this is a little bit bigger of a deal than I think it is,'” he recalled, adding that he was “blown away by it.”
“Carley’s writing is spectacular,” Cornett said. “And I remember reading the book and crying a lot, so the idea of getting to bring that to life was fun.”
Soverall added that she wanted to do the story justice knowing how beloved the characters are.
“I think that we’re both such big fans, so we get how important it is for these characters to be represented in a way that you want to see them as a fan,” she said.
The new series also stars Aurora Perrineau, Abigail Cowen, Michael Bradway, Joseph Chiu and Elisha Cuthbert.
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos for ‘Live with Kelly and Mark.’ (Disney/Miller Mobley)
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos executive produce a new six-part docuseries called Squatters: Get the F*** Out of My House.
The docuseries, which follows ordinary people blindsided by manipulators who know exactly how to weaponize tenant protections, is now available to watch on Hulu. Ripa and Consuelos spoke to ABC Audio about the unbelievable true stories included in the series.
“The title didn’t come out of nowhere. This is what these very frustrated homeowners keep saying because they are so desperate,” Ripa said.
Consuelos said that the squatters featured in the show “are so good at finding the loopholes in the law … to frustrate the owners of the homes.”
“We’ve sold homes,” Consuelos said. “You just assume you’re selling your home, and you go check on it, and you’re not gonna find a family that has moved into your house.”
Not only that, but you don’t assume you’ll find multiple families there and discover that “they’re leasing the house from a man who claims that’s his house,” Consuelos continued.
While the married couple have never encountered squatters on any of their properties, Ripa says she has a friend who dealt with squatters.
“He owns properties in California and he said that this is his life,” Ripa said. “There’s so many times that he has leased a property to a tenant who’s never paid rent and then he cannot evict them and so it is a part of his life.”
Through those experiences, Ripa said her friend has “had to become better than the squatters.”
“It is very common. I keep saying we could do episodes not just in each state, we could episodes in every county of every state or in every borough,” Ripa said. “It’s not a unique thing.”
