Queen Latifah called on this celebrity star to appear on the show
Queen Latifah has worked with several familiar faces during her time on The Equalizer. Some of the names she's teamed up with include Jada Pinkett Smith, Mike Epps, and Kelly Rowland. But one name Latifah has floated around as a possible guest star is Dolly Parton. Parton and Latifah have already collaborated on the 2012 film Joyful Noise. But Latifah's admiration for Parton went far before that, as the "Unity" singer was one of many who looked up to Parton.
"Not to be crass, but being very gifted up there and I developed kinda early and she was one of the people that I saw out there that carried it well, with humor and grace and talent and quick-wittedness. Just so many abilities. She definitely inspired me and I've tried to continue that, carry myself a certain way, and how I feel women should be treated and viewed throughout my career," Latifah once said according to Black Film.
Given her statements about Parton, it's no wonder why Latifah would like her on the series. She even claimed it was close to happening.
"I would love to get Dolly Parton on this show," Latifah said in an interview with ET. "We came very close to being able to make it happen last year. So I don't know if we'll be able to do it this year, but I would love to get Dolly on."
Parton had similar praise for Latifah. Joyful Noise was the perfect film for the two artists to collaborate on. The feature was a musical that called on both to tap into their backgrounds as musicians. According to Latifah, they even somewhat collaborated musically in the film since Parton wrote a few of the songs Latifah used in the movie. Meanwhile, Parton was pleased to see that their styles matched as well as they did.
"We've been working on some pre-records for the music," Parton once told CNN. "We really liked each other a lot. Our personalities are very compatible, which I thought they would be. I knew I would love working with her. And I had never met her though until then. We'd talked on the phone after we started talking about doing the movie."
"But our voices blended really well," she added. "Our personalities seemed to really, you know, gel. So I think we're going to have a lot of fun doing it and it looks like it's going to be a wonderful show. It was written and will be directed by a guy named Todd Graf. And he's done a wonderful script."
Additionally, Parton and Latifah found some similarities between their backgrounds thanks to Joyful Noise. In the picture, the pair play choir singers, which wasn't entirely new to Parton. Speaking with Red Book, she shared that her father was a preacher. She also spent a lot of time writing Gospel songs in her formative years, which helped her become one of the world's biggest singers.
"When I first started writing, recording, and performing, it was gospel. At our little Pentecostal church, we'd do hand-clapping and holy-roller moves," she said.
Likewise, Latifah had a lot of experience in the choir herself during her youth.
"I grew up singing church music in Bible school, where we kids [from East Orange, NJ] went during vacations to stay out of trouble. My aunt was a choir director, and I used to go to rehearsal with her," she added.