The movie Kathy Bates needed to be talked into making: “I threw it in the trash”
When Kathy Bates was first sent the script for what would become one of her most beloved movies, her reaction wasn’t exactly glowing. In fact, she chucked the screenplay in the bin.
In Bates’ recollection, she was warned off reading this particular script by her agent before it even made it into her hands. In fact, it was only given to her because the agent was legally obligated to do so, thanks to the filmmakers attaching a concrete offer to the script. If that salary offer hadn’t been included, it’s entirely possible that the world would never have met ‘Mama’ Boucher, the fried snake-serving mother of Bobby Boucher, a funny-talking man-child who tackles as hard as he obsesses over high-quality H2O.
“I read the first 12 pages,” Bates admitted to Vanity Fair of The Waterboy’s script. “It was really silly, it was a football movie, and I thought, eh, and I threw it in the trash.” The next thing she knew, though, her niece noticed the scrunched-up script in the bin and was curious enough to dig it out and smooth out the title page. When she saw the name ‘Adam Sandler’, she freaked out, much to Bates’s bemusement. “Adam Sandler!” the niece exclaimed, her face a mix of excitement and disbelief. “Don’t you know who Adam Sandler is!?”
Naturally, Bates – an Oscar winner who tended to make serious, prestigious pictures – had never heard of Sandler, despite Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore both being substantial comedy hits at that point. However, when her niece bellowed, “You’ve got to do this! You’ve got to do this!”, she decided to heed her advice and The Waterboy another shot. This time, she actually read the whole script and found a brilliantly silly yet heartfelt tale of a socially awkward weirdo finally discovering his true calling in life.
“One of my Achilles Heels, both as a person and as an actor,” Bates confessed, realising she’d been too quick to judge, “I take things way too seriously. This was an opportunity to just let it all hang out, and just play and be silly.” Bates had never made an out-and-out comedy at that time, and suddenly, the prospect of embracing her ridiculous side started to sound pretty appealing.
Amusingly, though, the team behind The Waterboy never truly expected Bates to say yes, so when they got word that she was interested, it took them all by surprise. “It was like disbelief, you know?” co-writer Tim Herlihy told SB Nation in 2018. “You expect to get your third and fourth choice. You don’t expect to get Kathy Bates!”
The next thing everyone knew, Bates was making everyone split their sides while playing Mrs Boucher on the film’s Florida set. She gave as good as she got with Sandler, whose particular brand of imbecilic-but-smarter-than-you-think comedy isn’t something every actor excels at, and became one of the most celebrated elements of the film. Heartwarmingly, Bates also had a whale of a time working on the movie, smiling, “It turned out to be one of the most wonderful experiences of my whole life.”
This warm experience must have translated to viewers, too, because Bates has long been adamant that there are two movies she is asked about the most by fans. One of these films is (of course) Misery, the ankle-breaking Stephen King thriller for which she won her ‘Best Actress’ Oscar. The other, though, is The Waterboy – and she thinks the ratio may even swing Mrs Boucher’s way. “People will come up and they’ll talk about Misery,” she acknowledged. “But a lot of people will talk about Waterboy.”
