Ahead of the upcoming 77th Emmy Awards, where Kathy Bates is up for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama, the 77-year-old actor shared that she feels like she’s in the “best time” of her life. Certainly the success of Matlock has something to do with it, with Season 2 gearing up to premiere in the 2025 TV schedule this fall, but another piece of the puzzle is that she’s feeling healthier than ever after shedding 100 pounds of weight across a seven-year period. She has a message to anyone looking down on how she got there.
Bates made major lifestyle changes in order to manage her Type 2 diabetes and after surviving multiple rounds of cancer. Here’s what she told Variety about her weight loss:
People say, ’Well, it was the Ozempic.’ Fuck you, it was the Ozempic! It took me years to do this. I got this diagnosis about diabetes — my father died of it; his mother died of it; one of my sisters is in peril. When they said ’diabetes,’ I figured out what to do to slowly, over years, to lose the weight. And then when Ozempic came along, I was able to lose the last 15 to 20 pounds and keep it off.
Ozempic, which was approved by the FDA in 2017, is a weekly injection that helps lower blood sugar by helping the pancreas make more insulin. It’s used to treat patients with Type 2 diabetes like Kathy Bates. While the drug (and other semaglutide drugs) have gone viral for being more widely used by celebrities, Bates shared in her interview that her decision to use the medication was motivated by her health above anything else.
In fact, she used it to help her in a gradual way. As Bates also said:
But the juxtaposition of getting healthy and then this show coming along is just unbelievable. The timing of it is great.
Kathy Bates previously opened up in March how when she was on Harry’s Law back in 2011 and 2012, she “was so heavy” that she “had to sit down in between every take, and it was awful.” She has called being on Matlock a “magnificent experience” and while she of course gets tired like anybody would, she’s able to do a lot more than she used to.
Bates' place on the 2025 Emmy nominations list makes her the oldest-ever nominee to be given a nod in the Outstanding Drama Actress category, which she calls a “badge of honor.” The actress also had a big win at the Critics’ Choice TV Awards along with having noms by the Golden Globes and SAG Awards.
Matlock isn’t only receiving critical acclaim either. It’s also a wildly popular series, with the first season averaging 17 million total viewers across platforms, making it the #1 new broadcast series and #2 broadcast series overall in its debut season. You can catch Kathy Bates at the Emmys this Sunday September 15 at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET on CBS.
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