Kathy Bates CBS drama ‘Matlock’ renewed for Season 2.

Kathy Bates knows what it’s like to feel overlooked and underestimated, especially in youth-obsessed Hollywood.
Politely warning, “Excuse my language,” beforehand, Bates, 76, tells a favorite story attributed to two-time Oscar-winner Shelley Winters, who was instructed to bring a photograph and a resume to an audition late in her career.
“So (Winters) pulled out one of her Oscars from a bag, slammed it on the desk and said, ‘Here’s my (expletive) picture.’ Then she slammed the next Oscar down and said, ‘Here’s my (expletive) resume,'” Bates says. “As actors, we can relate to getting older, becoming invisible. It’s like our heyday has passed.”
Bates’ unfounded concerns about her career heyday being in her past emerged before she took the role of lawyer Madeline “Matty” Matlock in CBS’ “Matlock” reboot (Thursdays, 9 EDT/PDT). Right now, the only career questions around the Oscar winner (“Misery”) center around how long Bates will stay with “Matlock,” which has already been renewed for a second season in 2025.
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Executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman, who created and executive produced CW’s “Jane the Virgin,” leaned into Bates’ clout when pitching “Matlock” to CBS executives. Adding Bates to the conversation made it clear the show would have the gravitas and humor enabled by one of this generation’s consistent acting greats.
“When I was explaining to CBS what the show would be, I absolutely said to them, ‘Imagine Kathy Bates in the role,'” says Urman. “And then to end up with Kathy is really extraordinary.”
Even after five seasons of FX’s “American Horror Story” and a 2020 Academy Award nomination for playing the crusading mother in Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell,” she was not in a great place professionally. A canceled movie project had left the actress discussing “semi-retirement” with her agent.
But Bates was surprised by her immediate liking while reading the script for the procedural “Matlock,” focusing on an underestimated septuagenarian lawyer talking her way back into the legal workforce. As Matty says in the premiere episode, “There’s this funny thing that happens when women age. We become damn near invisible. It’s useful because nobody sees us coming.”
But Matty Matlock has no nepo-baby relationship with the disarming TV icon, defense attorney Ben Matlock, played by Andy Griffith.
Matty proclaims her cursed luck sharing the same last name as the memorable character in NBC’s original series, which aired on NBC from 1986-’92 and ABC for three final low-rated seasons from 1992-’95.
But it’s a ruse: The first episode reveals that Matty is not the proud Costco-shopping, ketchup-packet-collecting widow she pretends to be. Instead, Matlock is an invented name – an elaborate disguise for wealthy vigilante lawyer Madeline Kingston. Kingston is secretly gathering information to find the prestigious law firm partner who hid documents that could have taken opioids off the market 10 years earlier.
That means Madeline Kingston is secretly trying to imprison one of the law partners Matty Matlock seeks to impress – including crusading partner Olympia Lawrence (Skye Marshall), Olympia’s estranged husband Julian (Jason Ritter), and, the biggest cut of all, Julian’s father, law firm chief Senior (Beau Bridges).
The Episode 1 shocker reveals that even the deadbeat and dead husband money-desperate Matty laments about is another Matlock creation. Kingston’s loving husband Edwin (Sam Anderson) works from the couple’s lavish home on the plot to avenge the opioid death of their daughter.
“When the twist came at the end, suddenly I thought, ‘Now, this is interesting to me,'” says Bates. “It had depth.”
Bates came on board. The Matlock-inspired high jinks – including a stress-dream sequence in which Matty wears one of Ben Matlock’s seersucker suits – amid the high stakes has bridged the gap between “Matlock” fans and legal-drama-loving newbies. “Matlock” is such an emerging TV force that Bates caused a cosmic disturbance by talking about retirement, telling The New York Times in September that the emotion-stirring drama was her “last dance.”
“I was so shocked,” Bates says, laughing, about fans’ dismay at the retirement talk that led to an official clarification. Bates is not planning to step down anytime soon. “At the time, I was feeling the difficulties of doing the show and living up to people’s expectations,” she says. “It was a truthful look into how I was feeling that night. But I wouldn’t want to retire from this. This show has been such an unexpected gift, especially at my age.”
Bates reveled in reintroducing herself to TV viewers during a villain segment at last month’s Primetime Emmy Awards. The segment extolled her Oscar-winning breakthrough as Annie Wilkes in 1990’s “Misery” and showed off Bates, who has lost as much as 100 pounds over the past seven years.
“It was a return and a debut for me since I’ve lost weight. I looked really great, and I had a beautiful gown,” says Bates. “I look at the photos of me on the red carpet, and they’re different from the years before. I just feel so much more relaxed, and I feel like I belong.”
Urman promises that the first “Matlock” season will solve the mystery of the opioid-document-destroying villain. But there will be new legal adventures for Matty, who often hilariously details her sex life to knock her listeners off balance. “An older woman talking about sex just throws people off because we’re not used to hearing it,” she says. “But you know what? Older women have sex; they know what condoms are. She’s had sex for many years.”
Bates has gone from showbiz weary to riding home from the last day of filming the series’ first season earlier this month, feeling exhausted but elated.
“I was napping and dozing and suddenly it just felt like I had imagined all of this,” says Bates. “It all just seemed like a dream.”
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