Elle King said she feels like a “different person” after embracing a new kind of therapy following her disastrous performance at the Grand Ole Opry’s Dolly Parton tribute show earlier this year.
Speaking with Kaitlyn Bristowe on the Off the Vine podcast, King spoke a bit about the treatment she sought after she drunkenly swore on the Opry stage and appeared to forget the lyrics to Parton’s song, “Marry Me.”
“After everything that happened in January, I went to a different type of therapeutic program because I was very sad,” King said. “Nobody really knows what I was going through behind closed doors, and I just that as like: A) if it wasn’t this, it was going to be something else, and B) I’ve had to heal and deal and go through things.”
King admitted she was skeptical at first when someone told her she might find a silver lining in the experience, but eventually found that she had become a “different person.” A few moments later, she said she’d found “more silver linings in it than not,” adding: “Ultimately, I couldn’t go on living my life, or even staying in the situation that I had been going through; I couldn’t continue to be existing in that high level of pain that I was going through at the time.”
King also seemed to praise Parton’s help in her reaching this stage, thanks to the incredible kindness the country legend showed her after the performance. “Dolly Parton, she just delivered me this opportunity for growth,” King said. “She loves butterflies, doesn’t she? Like, talk about metamorphosis.”
Back in May, King appeared on Chelsea Handler’s podcast, where shared a few more details about the events leading up to her performance. She said she’d gotten the call to perform last minute after the scheduled headliner dropped out, and while she accepted the gig, she said that day had already been really difficult.
“I had been going through something very heavy and traumatic in my life at the time,” King said. “And that day was a really big day dealing with what I was going through, and I’m still going through, and I suffer from severe PTSD. That day, I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t slept in days, and I was really overwhelmed. I was like a shell of myself.”
While King said she did not feel obligated to explain what was going on in her life, she did state: “I also don’t think that it does excuse the fact that, maybe I shouldn’t have been fucking drinking. This is a sacred stage, and I fucked up.”
