Kathy Bates Says She Will Retire After Her CBS Series MATLOCK Concludes; "This Is My Last Dance"
Academy Award winner Kathy Bates says the series Matlock will be her swan song. The actress, who is known for her roles in the films Misery, Fried Green Tomatoes, Dolores Claiborne, Titanic, About Schmidt, and Richard Jewell, also had TV roles in shows like Six Feet Under, The Office, Two and a Half Men and American Horror Story: Coven.
She won Emmys for Outstanding Guest Actress and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for the latter two projects. She also starred in Netflix’s two-season-long 2017 sitcom Disjointed, which follows a medical dispensary’s owner.
Her latest turns were in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Netflix’s A Family Affair, opposite Nicole Kidman.
This new series is a remake of the ’80s/’90s original (which starred Andy Griffith) and follows a brilliant attorney’s return to a prestigious law firm after having achieved success in her younger years. It will also feature Jason Ritter, Skye P. Marshall and Beau Bridges. It hails from showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman.
“This is my last dance,” she told the New York Times simply in an interview published Sunday.
In fact, Bates revealed that she was ready to retire earlier, after a film shoot had soured for her (she did not specify the production) late last year. However, in January 2024, her agents sent her the script for the procedural, the premise of which — a reimagining on the classic legal TV drama, featuring a septuagenarian righting wrongs — intrigued the actress as a person who has faced injustice earlier in her career, she said.
“Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it,” she said of the series. “And it’s exhausting. It becomes my life,” Bates said of the all-consuming nature of acting. “Sometimes I get jealous of having this talent. Because I can’t hold it back, and I just want my life.”
I love Kathy Bates. Fried Green Tomatoes is one of my two favorite movies of all time, and I have enjoyed her other roles very much as well. She has had an incredible career, and deserves the retirement. I am looking forward to seeing her one more time in this series though. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.
The 18-episode Matlock series will premiere on CBS on September 22nd, and it will later be released on Paramount+.
via: Deadline