VARIETY ‘Actors on Actors’: Kathy Bates and Billy Bob Thornton on MATLOCK, LANDMAN and More

In a new conversation for VARIETY’s “Actors on Actors” issue, Kathy Bates and Billy Bob Thornton discuss how Bates almost quit acting before “Matlock,” “Landman,” and how Thornton was almost in “Misery” — which Bates won an Oscar for. 

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Bates on how she almost quit acting before “Matlock”:

“I didn’t watch [the original ‘Matlock.’] Everybody always asked me that — did I watch the show?…Well, let’s say it was a conscious choice. I watched a couple to see what I could get out of it, but our show is just so different. I feel like this part was written with me in mind. Jennie Snyder Urman created it. And I’m lucky because I heard, originally, they wanted to make [my character] Andy Griffith’s great-great-granddaughter. So she’d be 30-something. But Jennie took a walk, and it came to her that she wanted to write something about older women and feeling invisible. When I first read the script, I thought, this is just episodic, and I’m not interested in doing that. And then I finally got to the end, and there’s this twist. I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m in. I’m in.’ Because I really had one foot out the door…I just felt that I was getting small roles in films that I loved that people were not seeing. I just began to ask myself, ‘Is this what I want to keep doing? Do I want to sell the house and maybe move to France and call it a day?’ And then I got this script. It just fit me like a glove.”

Thornton on how he was almost in “Misery”:

“There was a time I went in and read for Rob Reiner for ‘Misery’…I swear to God. Originally, Richard Farnsworth, who played the sheriff, had a deputy. I saw Rob Reiner for it. And Rob said right in the room, ‘You’re the guy. We can send everybody else home.’ I was very excited. And I got a call from Rob Reiner — not many directors would do this — he called me and he said, ‘Listen, I’ve been looking at the script and been planning out what I’m going to do with this movie.’ He said, ‘You can come up here and shoot this for the money or the insurance or whatever you need, but I’m just telling you, it’s not going to be in the movie’…He said, ‘I don’t want you to come up here expecting that this is going to be in the movie. And I didn’t want you to be disappointed.’ He said, ‘But I’ll leave it up to you. Do you want to come shoot it anyway?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I thought that was very cool of him.”

Thornton on how the cast of “Landman” didn’t have time to get to know each other before shooting:

“We had to kind of jump in. We had one cast dinner before we started. I don’t know if this makes any sense or not, but they’re all such specific personalities that the chemistry almost happened. Ali Larter [who plays Thornton’s feisty ex-wife] bursts through the room wearing half a sarong and starts bossing me around. It just makes you go, ‘What are you talking about, honey? Leave me alone. I’m trying to watch TV.’ And Michelle Randolph’s like a kitten. I’ve got a 20-year-old daughter in college, so that’s why it’s so easy for me to play that. At the same time, the stuff she says to me? Oh my God. We really did become a family, and I know people say that a lot, but it really is true in this case.”

[Photo Credit: Peggy Sirota for Variety Magazine – Video Credit: Variety/YouTube]

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