Weekend Watch: Kathy Bates, Now and Then

Editor’s note:

If you caught this piece in your inbox right after it went live, you probably noticed it went up a little early, before I’d added the photos and trailers. (That’s what happens when the publish button gets ahead of the writer!) Everything’s now properly in place.

I’ve also updated the text to remove mention of actor David Del Rio following his firing from Matlock after sexual assault allegations, as reported by Variety. (I want to be clear: I don’t condone or excuse toxic or disrespectful behavior in any workplace.)

The focus of this essay remains where it always belonged: on Bates’ extraordinary work and the evolution of her craft.

Thanks, as always, for reading and for your patience when posts evolve in real time.

— JP

Kathy Bates has always had the kind of presence that can fill a room before she even speaks. She doesn’t so much perform as occupy, shaping silence until it bends toward her. In CBS’s revival of Matlock, that presence becomes the series’ greatest special effect—a reminder that sometimes the most riveting thing on television isn’t a twist, but a human being who knows how to listen.

The new Matlock, from executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman (Jane the Virgin), doesn’t attempt a one-to-one remake of the Andy Griffith courtroom staple. Instead, it reimagines the premise through a contemporary lens, introducing Bates as Madeline Matlock, a sharp, unassuming attorney who returns to the legal world after years away. Where Griffith’s folksy Ben Matlock solved cases with cornbread charm and Southern guile, Bates’ version wields empathy as strategy. Her Matlock disarms people simply by paying attention.

It’s a smart evolution for both the franchise and Bates herself. At 76, she’s an actor long past the point of needing to prove anything, which makes every choice she makes onscreen—every pause, every flicker of amusement—feel both deliberate and alive. She plays Madeline as a woman who knows she’s underestimated and uses it as leverage. When she faces off against younger colleagues or arrogant clients, the pleasure comes not from what she says, but from what she withholds. You can see her measuring people, testing their stories like evidence.

That subtlety gives the show an energy most network dramas can’t fake. The procedural cases are fine—competent, twisty enough to fill an hour—but it’s Bates who makes the formula sing. She radiates what so few characters on television have anymore: wisdom. Not the soft, sentimental kind, but the hard-earned version that comes from having lived enough life to understand what matters and what doesn’t. When she delivers a line like “Experience is just another word for all the mistakes you survived,” it lands like closing argument and confession all at once.

The supporting cast—Skye P. Marshall, Jason Ritter, and Leah Lewis—bring generational friction and light comedy, but everything revolves around Bates. She turns Matlock into a small study of performance itself: how people present versions of truth, how the smallest gestures can redirect an entire room. The camera seems to know this, often lingering on her face a second longer than expected, as if afraid to miss whatever she might do next.

There’s a temptation to call Matlock “comfort television,” but Bates resists the label. She’s too alive, too unpredictable for nostalgia. Her work here is both an homage to television’s past and an argument for its future: that maturity and magnetism can still carry a network drama in an era of noise.

It’s been years since Bates has had a role that lets her fully stretch—part courtroom tactician, part moral compass, part trickster—but Matlock gives her the space. Watching her is its own kind of verdict: charisma this seasoned doesn’t need a plot twist to surprise you.

If Matlock shows Kathy Bates at her most seasoned—deft, wry, entirely in control—then Misery captures the moment the world realized what she could do. Watching them back-to-back isn’t just an actor’s study; it’s a 30-year map of power and restraint, of how an artist evolves from surprise to certainty.

When Misery opened in 1990, adapted by William Goldman from Stephen King’s novel and directed by Rob Reiner, Bates was a relative unknown outside the theater world. Her casting as Annie Wilkes, a lonely Colorado nurse who rescues (and imprisons) her favorite novelist after a car crash, felt like a risk. But from the moment she appears—nursing James Caan’s Paul Sheldon back to health with wide-eyed devotion—she radiates the kind of authenticity that makes horror plausible.

Annie Wilkes could have been caricature: the deranged fan, the monstrous woman undone by obsession. But Bates found something quieter and more disturbing. She plays Annie not as a villain but as a believer. When she gushes over her beloved Misery novels, you see both awe and hunger; when she turns violent, it feels like heartbreak curdled into rage. Her performance never relies on volume. Even in the infamous “hobbling” scene, where she shatters Paul’s ankles to keep him from leaving, she delivers the line—“God, I love you”—with something close to sincerity.

That sincerity is what made the film endure. In an era of high-concept thrillers and glossy psychodramas, Bates brought the terror back to humanity. Annie isn’t supernatural or symbolic—she’s the loneliness we’d rather not look at. The way she coaxes and scolds, her sudden mood shifts from maternal to menacing, the childlike cadence of her speech—it’s all rooted in psychological realism. We fear her not because she’s a monster, but because she’s plausible.

The performance won Bates the Oscar for Best Actress, making her the first woman to win for a horror role since The Silence of the Lambs’ Jodie Foster the following year. But the award only hints at what she achieved: she redefined what horror could hold. Annie Wilkes isn’t a scream queen or a femme fatale; she’s a fully dimensional human being undone by loneliness, faith, and disappointment.

Rewatching Misery now, after seeing Bates in Matlock, you realize the through line is empathy. Whether she’s wielding a sledgehammer or a closing argument, she treats people as puzzles to be solved—broken, contradictory, fascinating. The difference is that, in Matlock, she’s learned to wield that insight with grace rather than fury.

Bates has said she modeled Annie’s volatility on her own struggle with rejection as an actress, channeling frustration into focus. Decades later, that same focus defines her work on television: sharp, patient, impossible to ignore.

Misery remains a master class in control—the terror of kindness curdled. Matlock is its mirror image: the triumph of kindness earned. Watch them together, and you see the span of a career that’s never stopped interrogating power—how it’s used, who gets to hold it, and what happens when empathy becomes a weapon.

Whether you’re drawn to the sharp wit of Matlock or the haunting devotion of Misery, I hope one (or both) offers a moment to pause, reflect, or simply see a gifted actor’s craft in a new light. Enjoy your weekend, and thanks, as always, for watching along with me.