Bill Maher Pays Tribute to Dolly Parton on Real Time, Jokes and All
Bill Maher opened the Friday, August 28, 2026 episode of HBO's Real Time with a tribute to Dolly Parton, who died three days earlier at the age of 80.
Parton's family announced that she died peacefully in Nashville on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, following a brief illness with cancer, according to CNN. Her nephew shared the news. She had dealt with health issues over the past year, Deadline reported.
During his monologue, Maher catalogued the worldwide tributes that followed Parton's death — events in London, the Empire State Building lit pink, a Santa Monica ferris wheel adorned with hearts, and the Sphere in Las Vegas, which added a nipple to its display in her honour. He also made a joke about Parton's signature busty appearance, per Deadline, the kind of crack she herself spent decades turning into a cottage industry of one-liners.
Parton was an 11-time Grammy winner known as the Queen of Country. She wrote "I Will Always Love You," a song that became a No. 1 hit for her twice and later reached global audiences through Whitney Houston's 1992 cover. Her catalogue spans dozens of albums and more than 3,000 songs written across six decades.
Beyond music, Parton built a philanthropic record that few entertainers match. Through the Dollywood Foundation, she advocated for children's education and literacy, most notably through the Imagination Library programme, which mails free books to children from birth to age five. She raised money for HIV/AIDS research, helped fund the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine with a $1 million donation in 2020, and dedicated herself to disaster relief, animal welfare, and LGBTQ causes, as reported by Deadline.
For viewers, Maher's tribute sat in the space Parton always occupied in pop culture — somewhere between reverence and a wink. The monuments lit up for her ranged from the sombre to the playful, which is about right for a woman whose public persona was built on the same duality.
Parton was 80.
