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Key Takeaways:

Kathy Bates, the star of Matlock , is a favorite to win the 2025 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

Weeks before reading the show’s script, the 77-year-old actor called her agents to discuss retirement. Bates was increasingly frustrated by projects that weren’t reaching audiences and a particularly bad experience on a movie set.

Matlock convinced her to keep working, and she’s tackling a new role for Season 2.

It wouldn’t have been unreasonable in our modern era of endless reboots for the buzz to have been muted around the debut of the 2024 Matlock , a seemingly boilerplate revival of “that Andy Griffith TV show that wasn’t The Andy Griffith Show .”

But instead, bolstered by a sharp pilot script with a twist that m

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