Kathy Bates Says She Will Retire After CBS’ ‘Matlock’: “This Is My Last Dance”

After five decades in Hollywood, Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Kathy Bates says she is ready to yell cut. The esteemed performer will put away her scripts following CBS‘ reboot of Matlock, premiering Sept. 22 and later dropping on Paramount+.

“This is my last dance,” she told the New York Times simply in a new interview published Sunday.

In fact, Bates revealed that she was ready to retire earlier, after a film shoot had soured for her (she did not specify the production) late last year. However, in January 2024, her agents sent her the script for the procedural, the premise of which — a reimagining on the classic legal TV drama, featuring a septuagenarian righting wrongs — intrigued the actress as a person who has faced injustice earlier in her career, she said.

“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 series. “And it’s exhausting.”

Bates is most known for her Academy Award-winning role as Annie Wilkes in 1990’s Misery, about a violent hermit who kidnaps a famous novelist. Later on, she had arcs on television shows like Six Feet Under, The Office, Two and a Half Men and American Horror Story: Coven. She won Emmys for Outstanding Guest Actress and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for the latter two projects. She also starred in Netflix’s two-season-long 2017 sitcom Disjointed, which follows a medical dispensary’s owner. Her latest turns were in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Netflix’s A Family Affair, opposite Nicole Kidman.

With an 18-episode order, Matlock is anything but restful. The remake of the late ’80s original (which starred Andy Griffith) follows a brilliant attorney’s return to a prestigious law firm after having achieved success in her younger years. It will also feature Jason Ritter, Skye P. Marshall and Beau Bridges. It hails from showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman.

“It becomes my life,” Bates said of the all-consuming nature of acting. “Sometimes I get jealous of having this talent. Because I can’t hold it back, and I just want my life.”