CNN’s Dolly Parton Tribute Goes Wrong After Network Airs Photo of Las Vegas Impersonator — Prompting an Apology to Her Family

A television tribute intended to honor Dolly Parton took an awkward turn when CNN mistakenly showed viewers a photograph of a Las Vegas impersonator instead of the country music legend herself.

The error happened Tuesday night during Laura Coates Live, just hours after Parton’s family announced her death.

As host Laura Coates and CNN senior correspondent Shimon Prokupecz reflected on Parton’s extraordinary career, viewers were shown a slideshow of images celebrating the singer’s life.

For several moments, everything appeared normal.

Then a photograph of tribute artist Kelly Vohnn appeared on screen.

CNN has since acknowledged the mistake and apologized directly to Parton’s family.

The mistake happened during a live tribute from Nashville

The segment aired roughly 12 hours after news of Parton’s death became public.

About seven minutes into the program, Coates introduced Prokupecz, who was reporting from Nashville as fans gathered to remember the country icon.

Coates told viewers that people were paying tribute to the “queen of country,” before the broadcast moved through a collection of photographs from Parton’s career.

Five of the images correctly showed Parton.

The sixth featured Vohnn, a Las Vegas performer known for impersonating the singer.

The photograph was presented as part of the same memorial slideshow without identifying Vohnn as a tribute artist.

CNN later issued an apology

After the error was noticed, CNN confirmed that the wrong image had been used.

In a statement provided to the Daily Mail, a spokesperson said the network regretted what happened.

“We regret the error and apologize to the Parton family,” CNN said.

For Vohnn, however, the mistake became much more than an embarrassing television mix-up.

The longtime entertainer was already mourning the woman whose music and image had played such a major role in her own career.

Kelly Vohnn learned about it from friends

Vohnn said she had no idea her photograph had appeared during CNN’s coverage until messages began arriving from people who knew her.

Friends told her she was suddenly appearing on national television.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Speaking to the New York Post, Vohnn criticized the network’s handling of the photograph.

“Somebody at CNN really messed up and didn’t do their research,” she said.

The moment was particularly uncomfortable because Vohnn had already been deeply affected by Parton’s death.

She described herself as heartbroken by the loss and credited Parton with giving her a great deal both “as a woman and an artist.”

Then came the bizarre experience of seeing her own face inside a memorial segment meant for Dolly.

“It was just weird,” she said.

The image had been taken at a Las Vegas event

The photograph used by CNN was not an obscure private image.

According to Getty Images, it had been taken on December 16 during a movie screening in Las Vegas.

Vohnn had appeared publicly as a Dolly Parton tribute performer for decades, making the resemblance intentional — but also clearly part of a professional impersonation act.

That distinction is something Vohnn says she has always taken seriously.

She told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she never wanted Parton’s relatives to believe she was attempting to deceive anyone.

“I just didn’t want the family to think I am trying to fool anyone,” she said.

Vohnn says she always makes clear she is an impersonator

Vohnn has spent more than 26 years performing as famous entertainers.

Alongside Parton, her repertoire has included Reba McEntire, Faith Hill, Shania Twain and Patsy Cline.

But she insists that audiences are never supposed to believe they are watching the real stars.

Whenever people attend one of her shows, Vohnn said, the marketing clearly explains that she is a tribute performer.

She makes that distinction deliberately.

That is why the CNN mistake troubled her so much.

Instead of appearing in the context of a tribute act, her image was suddenly placed alongside authentic photographs of Parton during a memorial broadcast.

She addressed the situation publicly after it went viral

Vohnn later took to Instagram to make her position clear.

In a message directed toward The Dollywood Foundation, she said she had not granted permission for her image to be used in any way that might fool people into believing she was Parton.

She added that similar mistakes had happened before.

Vohnn stressed that she does not control every photograph taken of her and called for journalists to be more careful about verifying images before using them on air.

She said better due diligence could prevent misleading material from being broadcast.

Just hours earlier, Vohnn had been paying tribute to Dolly herself

The timing added another strange layer to the story.

Hours before her image unexpectedly appeared on CNN, Vohnn had spoken to Las Vegas Fox affiliate KVVU-TV about Parton’s death.

She described the singer in deeply emotional terms.

“We just lost a really, really, really amazing human,” she told the station.

Vohnn said Parton was one of the most remarkable people in the world.

The comments showed just how personally she felt the loss.

Then, only hours later, she found herself accidentally inserted into national coverage of that same loss.

The mistake has made her emotional about continuing the act

The incident also appears to have raised a difficult question for Vohnn.

After spending decades portraying Parton, should she continue doing so now that the singer has died?

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Vohnn became emotional while discussing the future of her tribute performances.

“She represented hope in this chaotic world,” Vohnn said.

Despite the sadness surrounding the moment, she suggested that she still sees value in continuing to celebrate Parton’s legacy.

She said she hoped to keep “carrying the torch and sending love to her fans.”

CNN has faced other recent on-air corrections

The Parton photo mix-up comes after several other recent incidents in which CNN personalities have issued corrections or apologies.

Audie Cornish apologized during CNN This Morning after quoting a social media post attributed to a fake congressman while discussing Senator Mitch McConnell’s health.

Earlier, Abby Phillip corrected a report on NewsNight after inaccurately suggesting that a suspected ISIS-inspired incident near New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home had directly targeted him.

Authorities instead said suspects Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, had thrown explosives toward far-right protesters who were demonstrating against Mamdani.

A small error became a painful moment during a national farewell

For CNN, the mistake lasted only a matter of seconds.

For Vohnn, however, it happened at one of the most emotionally difficult moments imaginable.

She had spent decades honoring Parton through performance, had just spoken publicly about how much the singer meant to her and was still processing the news of her death.

Then she saw herself mistakenly placed inside Parton’s television memorial.

CNN has apologized, and Vohnn has made clear she never wanted anyone to mistake her for the woman she admired.

But the incident also underscored something more personal: for tribute artists like Vohnn, Parton was not simply a character to perform.

She was the reason the performance existed in the first place.