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Kathy Bates knows the power of a Southern accent well-deployed. The Memphis native has played her share of iconic roles-with-a-drawl in films like Fried Green Tomatoes and Richard Jewell, but like many actors she can change voice as needed. On her new CBS series, Matlock, she plays both Madeline Kingston, a wealthy woman on a mission to avenge her daughter’s death, and Matty Matlock, the grandmotherly, Southern-fried alter ego Kingston invents to infiltrate a law firm that may have been responsible for helping a drug company cover up evidence of the deadly danger of opioids.
The Southern accent comes and goes as Madeline turns into Matty and back again, and Bates, 76, has to keep meticulous track of it. “Even in my script, I have ‘accent, no accent, accent,’” Bates tells me on this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, where she and Matlock creator Jennie Snyder Urman — who grew up the suburbs north of NYC, far from any drawl or twang — let me in on their unique, enviable collaboration. “I think that she puts it on to make people think she’s a bumpkin, so she uses that and goes a little deeper than she has to,” Bates explains. “I try to manage my Southern accent as best I can.”
Bates, who has an Oscar and two Emmys under her belt, is using her voice in all kinds of fascinating ways on the set of Matlock, at the top of the call sheet and taking a leadership role on set. “ I know there are 200 people that make this show happen, but I feel like it’s my show,” she says, with Urman, 49, nodding in agreement. “I feel responsible, and I feel proud,” Bates adds. “It’s a huge gift at the end of my career.”
Matlock, a reimagining of the Andy Griffith-starring original, which ran from 1986-1995 on two networks — first NBC, then ABC — has been a smash hit for CBS. Urman’s reboot fits comfortably into the old-school procedural format but brings a lot of freshness, from the twist of Matty’s secret identity to the series’ frank approach to topics like sexual assault and race. At the heart of the show is Matty’s close but complicated friendship with her boss, Olympia (Skye P. Marshall), who’s navigating not just the cutthroat world of a top law firm but also the tightrope of corporate leadership as a Black woman. Now that Matlock is a hit, Urman — who was the creator and showrunner on The CW’s Jane the Virgin — is eager to push things forward in season 2, without letting the outside attention lead her astray. “I just try to focus on the page, the character, the work,” she says. “How am I gonna make this next episode interesting enough for Kathy Bates?”
Hear my entire conversation with Urman and Bates on today’s episode of the podcast, which also includes my check-in with Dave Gonzales — who literally wrote the book on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (he co-authored 2023’s MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios) — about what this past weekend’s Thunderbolts* means for the future of the superhero movie.
