Grace And Frankie Creators Address The Finale Cameo That Everyone's Talking About

If you're not caught up on the Netflix sitcom "Grace and Frankie," you might not be aware that the show recently closed out its seventh and final season with a showstopping series finale that has everybody buzzing.

The show stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the titular duo, who become friends after their respective husbands (Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen) fall in love with one another. It's been a fan favorite and by Netflix standards a long-running hit, but there's a cameo in the very last episode from someone who fans never saw on the show previously –- but who, indeed, has to have been the celebrity that fans were hoping to see enter the "Grace and Frankie"-verse the most.

If you haven't watched the series finale of "Grace and Frankie" on Netflix yet, and you haven't been spoiled on the surprise guest appearance from a certain show business legend, now might be a good time to close the tab. But if you do know who this surprise cameo is from, you'll be interested to learn exactly how it came to be. Here's the full story.

The cameo in question is from, naturally, Dolly Parton, who you doubtlessly already know starred in the classic 1980 comedy "9 to 5" along with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (and, as if that weren't enough, she also wrote and recorded the film's even more iconic title song).The "9 to 5" connection made a Dolly Parton cameo on "Grace and Frankie" something of a no-brainer, but in a recent Tudum story, the show's creators Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris spoke about how when the show first began they were reluctant to make it happen.

"You know, in the very, very beginning of the series, we didn't want to bring Dolly on yet because we wanted to establish Grace and Frankie as Grace and Frankie, and not the two ladies from '9 to 5,'" said Kauffman. But, once the show got more established, Kauffman said, it became something that became more desirable, since by that point everyone had connected to the characters themselves. In fact, according to Kauffman, attempts to get Parton started around the show's third season, but due to her busy schedule it took until the show's seventh for it to happen.

"We even wrote another character that we thought she was going to play that she didn't end up playing," added Morris. But then, according to Kauffman, the two writers saw Parton express interest in appearing on the show in an interview, after which their resolve to get her on the show became that much more powerful. "[W]e were like, 'All right, we're jumping on it now. We've only got this last season, so we've got to make it happen," said Kauffman. 

And fortunately for all "9 to 5" and "Grace and Frankie" fans, they did!