Joy

October 7, 2024 3:22 PM

Acclaimed actress Kathy Bates sat down with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz for CBS Sunday Morning yesterday, talking about her storied career in Hollywood, her role in the new Matlock reboot, and how it explores the frustrating "invisibility" of older women. The highlight of the interview, however, comes when Bates talked about her late mother -- specifically, a deeply painful memory from the night she won the Oscar for Misery -- and a resulting on-air revelation that lifts decades of burden and regret from her face in one beautiful shining moment.
posted by Rhaomi (19 comments total)

Whoa. That was heavy. What a gracious woman she is.
posted by queensissy at 3:36 PM on October 7 [3 favorites]

Wow. That moment of revelation was so powerful.
posted by unicorn chaser at 3:39 PM on October 7 [3 favorites]

Wow, you really could see it on her face. I'm glad I watched that.
posted by Tesseractive at 4:33 PM on October 7 [2 favorites]

Ugh, the refusal to acknowledge a child's success with the ol' "but you didn't do Bigger Success" thing is so, so fucking poisonous. It was a big feature of my childhood; I am every day of 52 years old, yet I have not forgotten.

How hard is it to smile and say "You done good. I'm proud of you." HOW. HARD. IS. THAT.

Similarly, I hate to even think how much her mom gaslighted her about the Oscars acceptance speech, for her to misremember it so deeply that she never went back and checked.
posted by humbug at 4:40 PM on October 7 [18 favorites]

"she should have had my life"

5000 words couldn't do that better.
5000 words shouldn't do that better.

but I eagerly await a new quote from Grandpa Simpson.
posted by clavdivs at 5:07 PM on October 7 [1 favorite]

It sounds interesting. Anyone have a non-geoblocked link?
posted by eviemath at 5:14 PM on October 7 [3 favorites]

What a sweet moment, you’d think she would have found this out before! But better late than never, it’s true. She is great, and she looks great, and I have to go watch that show.
posted by Glinn at 5:21 PM on October 7

eviemath: "It sounds interesting. Anyone have a non-geoblocked link?"

Idk if CBS restricts their TikTok like they do YouTube, but this has most of the clip. It's gone pretty viral so if you google "Kathy Bates mom" you're likely to find some unofficial reupload that works though.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:26 PM on October 7

Go to youtube and simply search "Kathy Bates CBS Sunday". It worked for me in Canada.

(Inside joke: Well, the clip did feature Russian jets, an Estonian school, Ukrainian students and an Italian dinner, but....)
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 7:13 PM on October 7

Many great film actresses over 40, from the classic Hollywood studio era right up till today, have found excellent work in television. I'm glad to see that Kathy Bates is taking that road. I've always admired her.

A few examples...

* Barbara Stanwyck, Big Valley
* Loretta Young, The Loretta Young Show (drama anthology series)
* Holly Hunter, Saving Grace
* Allison Janney, Mom
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:05 AM on October 8 [1 favorite]

I don't know why they decided to remake Matlock of all things, but given how great Harry's Law was, I am very willing to give any show with the premise 'Kathy Bates as unconventional lawyer' a shot.
posted by pattern juggler at 3:48 AM on October 8

any show with the premise 'Kathy Bates as unconventional lawyer'

I appreciate that this technically includes the Netflix stoner sitcom Disjointed.
posted by zamboni at 5:24 AM on October 8 [2 favorites]

Without spoilering because those last five minutes of the first episode were a doozy, I was not expecting the Matlock remake to be what it is. I kind of wish they had drawn things out a little bit and dropped clues like The Good Place did instead giving everything away in the first episode, but I guess that was probably the price for getting it made at all.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:21 AM on October 8 [2 favorites]

Barbara Stanwyck

Surely you mean MISS Barbara Stanwyck
posted by davidmsc at 7:21 AM on October 8 [3 favorites]

We all miss her.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:02 AM on October 8 [1 favorite]

I wish I could be as certain about what I had for breakfast as Ben Mankiewicz was about that Oscar speech.

From what I remember of The Young Turks web cast, I liked him. I hope this gets him bumped into more of a “news” capacity.
posted by brachiopod at 9:52 AM on October 8 [2 favorites]

@brachiopod

I am guessing he watched the speech to prepare for the interview which is why he was so specific in his memory that Bates thanked her mom at the end of the speech.
posted by indianbadger1 at 11:44 AM on October 8 [1 favorite]

I watched this last night and have been thinking about it off and on all day. It's so easy to hold on to our memories or interpretations of events and treat them as rock-solid proof of what we did wrong and how we let people down, either due to our own internal processes or because that's the narrative we're hearing from our "nearest and dearest." Most of us don't have the archival footage we can review to prove/disprove those narratives, and goodness knows it wasn't necessarily accessible to her at the time it would have been most useful to her. Seeing the specific moment when that weight lifted was powerful. I wish her every good thing.
posted by Ann Telope at 3:30 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]

these conversations about the weight of parents' words and memory and interpretation remind me of The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
posted by adekllny at 5:45 AM on October 9