Calling Debbie Allen a multihyphenate doesnt seem comprehensive enough. Over the course of five decades, she has been a successful actor, singer, dancer, director, writer, producer and mentor. She worked with Bob Fosse on Broadway, co-hosted a TV variety series, starred in Fame, saved A Different World from the brink of collapse, shepherded Amistad to the big screen, authored childrens books, choreographed multiple numbers for the Academy Awards and took over as an executive producer of Greys Anatomy. Born into an artistic family Pulitzer-nominated poet Vivian Allen is her mother, and Phylicia Rashad is her sister showbiz courses through Allens DNA.

On Sunday, her latest directorial endeavor, Dolly Partons Christmas on the Square , will premiere on Netflix. Less than a week later, on Nov. 27, the documentary Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker , which chronicles students at Allens Los Angeles dance academy, will also debut on the streaming service.

Christmas on the Square is a musical about a heartless business goliath (Christine Baranski) who barges into her hometown and threatens to evict a group of beloved shop owners in order to build a mall. Shes a Scrooge figure, with Parton who wrote the music playing a holiday spirit guide there to remind her what the season is all about. The supporting cast includes Jenifer Lewis, Treat Williams and Josh Segarra.

Allen, who is a peppy 70 years old, called me from the set of Greys Anatomy, where she was in the process of getting a new director set up to helm an episode. We spent an hour discussing her career, Partons glitzy Christmas parties, male gatekeepers, Allens failed pop foray, working with Aretha Franklin and implementing structural changes on Greys.

Walk me back to the beginning of this project. What was it like to get a phone call from Dolly about making a movie together if that is in fact how it happened?

Well, actually the call came from Sam Haskell, who is her partner. They did Heartstrings together. This movie, Christmas on the Square, was really Sams idea, and he was thinking of writing it as a book. He pitched it to Dolly, and then shes like, Oh, lets make this a musical, so she started writing the music. I think at first they started with a stage play, but then, by the time I was called, it was a movie on Netflix.