last night on late night

Dolly Parton Once Faced a Forest of Bears Rather Than Hook Up With a Guy She Didn’t Like

You wanna talk bad dates? Getting ghosted by a Tinder hookup has nothin’ on being kicked out of a ’57 Chevy and bein’ made to walk yourself home at night through a forest of Smokey Mountain bears. If that sounds like a pearl of folk wisdom you’d find in a Dolly Parton Christmas movie, that’s because it did happen to Dolly Parton. On Friday’s episode of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, the host sprung his latest in adult celebrity party games on his guests, Parton and Noah Centineo. Essentially, Parton said, “I dated a guy and he kicked me out of a car and made me walk home at night through a forest with bears and bobcats,” and Centineo had to guess whether this story was real or a bluff. He probed, “Did you encounter bears and bobcats?” and she said, “absolutely, I heard them, felt them.” She clarified that she was 17 or 18 at the time of the date, and her beau kicked her out of the car and made her walk five miles home through a forest because “it was a put out or get out situation.” Of course it’s a true story, because this is Dolly Parton, and it even has a moral: “I did learn something that night, though. I thought, if that ever happens to me again, I’m definitely giving it up. I would rather be chewed on by a boy than a bear.” Centineo’s whole persona is the exact opposite of the boy in this story, and his reaction is priceless.

Dolly Parton Once Braved a Forest of Bears to Escape a Date