‘Awards Chatter’ Pod: Kathy Bates on ‘Matlock’ Mania, Making ‘Misery’ and Why ‘Titanic’ Was No Fun

Kathy Bates, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is widely regarded as one of the greatest character actresses of all time.

A powerhouse on the stage and screens big and small for the past 50 years, she won a best actress Oscar for bringing from the page to the screen Annie Wilkes, the psychopathic “number one fan” of an author of romance novels, in Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990) — a character that later was chosen, in a poll conducted by the American Film Institute, as the 17th greatest movie villain of all time. She subsequently garnered three other Oscar nominations, all in the category of best supporting actress — for Mike Nichols’ Primary Colors (1998), Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) and Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell (2019).

Bates also was part of the film that became the biggest blockbuster of all-time for 12 years, 1997’s Titanic, which was awarded the best picture Oscar, and of 2009’s The Blind Side and 2011’s Midnight in Paris, which both were nominated for that same prize. She played the mother of Adam Sandler in 1998’s The Waterboy and Billy Bob Thornton in 2016’s Bad Santa 2. She directed episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, Oz, Six Feet Under (for which she received a Directors Guild Award nomination) and Everwood. She beat two different forms of cancer. And the list goes on.

In short, there’s nothing that Bates can’t do.

But not even Bates, who is now 76, anticipated the massive success of her latest project, the CBS drama series Matlock, which shares a name with the classic Andy Griffith show that ran from 1986 through 1995, but is very much its own thing. On her version of Matlock, the first season of which rolled out between September 2024 and April 2025, she plays Madeline ‘Matty’ Matlock, a lawyer who returns to the workforce at an older age than most, ostensibly because she needs the money — but actually, we later learn, with other motivations.

The show received rave reviews (it’s at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes); generated huge ratings (it was the most-watched new series and the second-most-watched series overall during the 2024-2025 season); and already has brought Bates a best actress in a drama series Critics Choice Award, with an Emmy nomination almost certain to follow. In fact, many predict that she will add a third Emmy statuette to her collection that already includes baubles for best guest actress in a comedy series for playing Charlie Sheen’s ghost on Two and a Half Men and best supporting actress in a limited series for playing a 19th century woman dug up from her grave in 21st century New Orleans on American Horror Story: Coven.

Over the course of a conversation at her home in Los Angeles, Bates reflected on how she wound up becoming an actress, and why she stuck with it even as stage roles that she had created, with great success, were brought to the screen with more traditionally beautiful actresses; how Misery changed her career, what her reaction was upon being asked to do a nude scene with Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt and why she felt the passengers on the real Titanic had a more enjoyable time than she did on the film about it; why she almost walked away from acting before signing on to Matlock, and why she has found the show to be such a gratifying — and rejuvenating — project to be part of; plus much more.