For years, Kathy Bates has believed she missed thanking someone pivotal during her acceptance speech after she won the Oscar for best actress in 1991 for her performance in Misery.
During an interview with CBS Sunday Morning in which she promoted her new series Matlock, Bates talked to Ben Mankiewicz about her Oscar moment and her mother, Bertye’s, response.
“When I won the Oscar for Misery, she said, ‘I don’t know what all the excitement [is] about, you didn’t discover the cure for cancer,'” Bates recalled.
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She also said she forgot to thank her mum during her acceptance speech, but Mankiewicz disputed that and showed her a video of her remarks in which she did, in fact, acknowledge her mother.
Bates was shocked and became visually emotional.
“Thank you,” she said to Mankiewicz, “Why did I think I didn’t thank her?”
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The elder Bates died in 1997 and her daughter said her mother “should have had my life.”
“When she died, I said come into me. I wanted her spirit to come into me,” Bates said.
“Even though we had so many difficulties, I wanted her spirit to come into me and enjoy everything I was enjoying because of what she’d given up.”
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Bates has said that starring in the reboot of the procedural drama Matlock will be her final role as she plans on retiring.
However, she clarified this remark days later at the 2024 Emmys.
“I was thinking about maybe going into semi-retirement, until I got Jennie Urman’s script for Matlock,” Bates told People on the red carpet.
“I read it and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, baby, I gotta do this’. It’s amazing. It’s not just an episodic, there’s this overarching mystery that goes through the whole series.”
The interviewer then asked what Bates’ plans would be if the show ended up lasting for 20 seasons.
“Yeah, I think I’m gonna have to get Swarovski to decorate a walker for me or something,” she laughed.
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