The role Kathy Bates wasn’t allowed to reprise: “That would not be romantic”
Kathy Bates learned that it was possible to give a performance so good that it actually damaged her career.
When looking back at the most iconic villains of the 20th century, Bates’ performance in Misery is one of the most terrifying. The adaptation of Stephen King’s most personal novel, which was directed by the late great Rob Reiner, offered a terrifying assessment of what it would look like if a fan took their obsessions too far. Remarkably, the themes of Misery feel even more relevant today when looking at the extreme ways that toxic discourse emerges online.
Horror films aren’t often recognised by the Academy, but her performance as Annie Wilkes was so undeniable that the Oscars handed her the ‘Best Actress’ prize. While Bates was showered with praise for finding humanity in such a disturbing role, she became so synonymous with the terrifying performance that it was difficult for casting directors to see her as anything else.
It was only shortly after it was released that director Garry Marshall began pre-production on Frankie and Johnny, a romantic dramedy that was based on a 1987 two-character off-Broadway play that the actor had starred in, and although she was enthusiastic about potentially reprising the role for the cinematic adaptation, Bates said that Marshall denied her the chance to read for the role.
“He couldn’t make the leap that people would see me onscreen kissing someone,” she said, “Me actually kissing a man onscreen? That would not be romantic”.
The denial was particularly crushing, especially since Marshall was at the time a prominent director of romantic comedies, and his film would have seemingly benefited from the involvement of an Oscar-winning actress. However, Bates said that she shrugged off the criticism with the remark, “I’ve always heard that”, adding that she had been humiliated growing up by her father, who told her school’s acting teacher that his daughter was “not conventionally attractive”.
The situation was unfortunate because Frankie and Johnny ended up being a hit and earned significant acclaim for the performances by Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, in which the former was credited as having a comeback after being almost entirely dormant for the ‘80s, and Pfeiffer received a few award nominations for the role that Bates had originated.
Even if Marshall was callous in his casting choices, Bates ended up having the last laugh based on the direction that her career headed during the same period of time. While she didn’t get to be the lead of a romantic comedy, she starred in Fried Green Tomatoes the same year, which both critically and commercially outperformed Frankie and Johnny.
What’s ironic is that there’s no evidence to suggest that being in that rom-com would have significantly impacted Bates’ career, as she went on to become one of the most consistently employable stars of the ‘90s and early 21st century. Although Pfeiffer did find great parts shortly thereafter with her role in Batman Returns and an Oscar-nominated performance in Love Field, she hasn’t had the same success recently as Bates, who now stars in one of network television’s biggest shows with Matlock.
If there’s any true loser in the situation, it was Marshall, whose films continued to plummet in critical acclaim, with his last film, Mother’s Day, released posthumously in 2016 and lambasted by some critics as one of the worst of the century.
