Kathy Bates has been candid about considering retirement before CBS’ Matlock came along.
Despite having a prolific career spanning five decades, Bates thought about stepping away from acting in recent years. It wasn’t until she read the script for Matty in the gender-flipped Matlock legal drama that she reconsidered.
“Let’s say it was a conscious choice. I watched a couple [episodes of the original Matlock series] to see what I could get out of it, but our show is just so different. I feel like this part was written with me in mind,” Bates shared in a June 2025 edition of Variety‘s Actors on Actors. “[Creator] Jennie Snyder Urman created it. And I’m lucky because I heard, originally, they wanted to make [my character] Andy Griffith’s great-great-granddaughter. So she’d be 30-something.”
Bates was thrilled to get the chance to tell real stories about getting older.
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“But Jennie took a walk, and it came to her that she wanted to write something about older women and feeling invisible,” she continued. “When I first read the script, I thought, this is just episodic, and I’m not interested in doing that. And then I finally got to the end, and there’s this twist. I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m in. I’m in.’ Because I really had one foot out the door.”
Keep scrolling for Bates’ candid comments about a potential retirement — and to find out where she stands now:
September 2024
Bates made headlines when she seemed to allude that Matlock was her final project, telling The New York Times, “This is my last dance.” Bates said she had plans to move on from acting after a movie shoot “soured” her on the experience, but Matlock changed her mind.
“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 added at the time. “And it’s exhausting.”
October 2024
“I think people got confused and thought I was going to retire,” she clarified to People, while discussing Matlock‘s success. “What I meant was, how can it get any better? I would love for this to keep going.”
Bates did admit to growing frustrated in the past due to the limited roles available for women her age.
“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 recalled. “Then this happened. I couldn’t believe it.”
January 2025
During an episode of the “Dinner’s On Me” podcast, Bates credited executive producer Ryan Murphy for how he “rejuvenated” her career after he cast her in his FX anthology series American Horror Story.
“Right before he gave me the opportunity to do the show, I had breast cancer and [my show] Harry’s Law had been canceled rather unpleasantly,” Bates told host Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “When that summer happened, it was degrading.”
Bates recalled feeling “kind of humiliated” at the time, adding, “I felt like I had let my cast down and had never been through an experience like that. And then breast cancer, which does run in my family, so I wasn’t surprised.”
The actress admitted she wasn’t sure whether she would book more roles before Murphy came along.
“But it was more painful than I thought it was going to be,” she noted. “And I really felt like this is my career over.”
June 2025
According to Bates, she had “one foot out the door” with acting.
“I just felt that I was getting small roles in films that I loved that people were not seeing,” she shared while participating in Variety‘s Actors on Actors series. “I just began to ask myself, ‘Is this what I want to keep doing? Do I want to sell the house and maybe move to France and call it a day?’ And then I got this script. It just fit me like a glove.”
