Kathy Bates Doesn’t Know If She ‘Ever Really Succeeded’ in Improvising During Her Time on The Office

Bates also praised her costar Steve Carell, whom she shared many scenes with. “I couldn’t get over what a fantastic actor and improvisationist he is,” the Emmy winner said. “So for me, it was great to be around people like him and John [Krasinski] and a whole bunch of the guys and gals just to try and learn from them how they do what they do because it’s invisible.” She said she wished she “could have learned more” from Carell, 62.

“You know, I certainly enjoyed working on the show,” Bates explained, calling it “a lot of fun.” But, she said, she had a “problem” transitioning between the lines that were written and the improv the cast did. “I don’t know if I ever really succeeded. I kept getting tripped up on that,” she said. Still, she said it was a “wonderful experience” and though she left, in part, to lead her own show, Harry’s Law, she thought staying on The Office would have been fun. 

As for her character, Jo, Bates said, “I felt she had a lot of swagger and that she was probably a bull in a china shop. That’s that’s how she ran her company, sort of steamrolling over everybody and with her money.” Jo also had two Great Danes with her everywhere, whom Bates said she “loved.”

Bates currently stars in CBS’ Matlock. Back in September, she called Matlock her “last dance,” fueling retirement rumors, but in October she told PEOPLE she plans to keep working. “What I meant was, how can it get any better? I would love for this to keep going,” she said.

Matlock came when Bates was frustrated about the limited roles for older women in Hollywood. “I remember calling my agents and saying, ‘I think maybe I want to go into, if not retirement, semi-retirement. If I can’t afford to keep my house, I’ll sell it and maybe go to New York,’ ” she said. “Then this happened. I couldn’t believe it.”