Kathy Bates Says She Plans to Retire After Finishing CBS’ ‘Matlock’

Once CBS’ new series Matlock has aired its final episode, Kathy Bates will say sayonara to Hollywood, she told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “This is my last dance,” the 76-year-old actress said. An Oscar winner and an Emmy winner two times over, Bates had been readying to retire after a movie shoot went sideways late last year. (She declined to name the project.) But she put those plans on ice after her agents sent her the script for Matlock, a reboot of sorts of the beloved Andy Griffith procedural that ran from 1986 to 1995. “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 said of the new show. “And it’s exhausting.” Bates snagged an Academy Award for her role as a deranged fan to James Caan’s beleaguered novelist in 1990’s Misery and has worked steadily ever since, appearing in shows like Two and a Half Men, American Horror Story, and The Office, as well as movies like Fried Green Tomatoes, Titanic, Primary Colors, and Richard Jewell. “It becomes my life,” she told the Times of her approach to the craft. “Sometimes I get jealous of having this talent. Because I can’t hold it back, and I just want my life.” Matlock, which is set to premiere on Sept. 22, 2024, has been given an 18-episode order.