Kathy Bates breaks down that massive ‘Matlock’ premiere twist

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the Matlock series premiere.

CBS’ Matlock premiere ended with a staggering twist.

After spending the first 40 minutes of the episode presenting herself as a widowed, inexperienced ex-attorney with heaps of debt and a drive to make big bucks in big pharma cases, Kathy Bates’ Matty Matlock reveals a massive secret: she’s wealthy, cunning, and in love with her husband who is very much alive (played by Lost alum Sam Anderson).

Matty doesn’t take the bus to the office from her tiny apartment — she has a personal driver who shuttles her to and from her enormous mansion (she just uses the bus for one stop to keep up appearances). 

Bates’ protagonist is on a righteous quest to infiltrate the central legal firm and expose one of her new bosses for their role in the opioid epidemic, as the firm frequently defends pharmaceutical companies. “One of those three hid documents that could have taken opioids off the market 10 years earlier,” she says, looking at a bulletin board with photos of characters played by Beau Bridges, Jason Ritter, and Skye P. Marshall attached. “I’m gonna figure out who knew what when, and then I’m gonna put them in jail.”

Matty’s mission is deeply personal: earlier in the episode, she told a key witness about the death of her daughter, who died following a long battle with addiction. “I carry the weight of that loss every day,” she says midway through the episode. “I thought about what I’d do for my daughter. And the answer is: anything. Everything.”

Matty’s secret adds a delightfully tense layer of drama to every case, as she must continually maintain her mild-mannered facade to avoid suspicion from her peers. In a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Bates breaks down the premiere’s big twist and what it means for the series moving forward.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did Matlock‘s subject matter appeal to you as you considered taking on the project?

KATHY BATES: I thought it was important to see how these opioids affect the individual, no matter how poor or how wealthy you are. It’s a long-term battle, and people get involved just through no fault of their own. 

What’s challenging about playing a character living a double life?

Well, the first challenge for me was ‘Is it believable?’ And I remember talking to a friend who’s in the corporate world, and I said, ‘Do you believe that someone could do this?’ And he paused and then he said, ‘Yeah, I could do it.’ And he’s someone I’m very close to.

Then you have to track what’s going on with her in terms of her mission. Why is she reacting to this person in this way? How can she go this far? All of these different things. It requires really thinking things through. I think our showrunner said it’s a Rubik’s Cube, and so figuring all of that out is quite fun, actually.

What other challenges does Matty present?

I don’t have a child. That’s a real challenge for me. Luckily, Aaron D. Harris, who plays my grandson, is lovely, and we’ve had a lot of fun working together. But I remember talking to my niece, who does have a child, and I said, “I don’t know if I could do all of these things, be so devious and lie.” And she said that her love for her child was savage, and she said, “You don’t know what it’s like.” And I’ve since then talked to others that [say] they would go the full distance to protect their child.

What emotions drive Matty?

Certainly, I think that there’s a level of guilt, which is in the deep marrow of Matty. The fact that she feels tremendously guilty that she failed her child, and was unable to win the battle between the drugs and her child’s future, no matter what she did. It’s like Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol: we drag those boxes around behind us. And that’s certainly the big thing for Matty, that level of guilt. And also the level of, she’s been grieving for 10 years and I think she spent the last couple of years with her grandson Alfie cooking up this plan and using their wits. And I think all of that level of excitement and joy of working with him and finding that he was very passionate about bringing those people to justice that killed his mother.

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Is there any passion in Matty’s work beyond her personal mission?

There’s an unexpected gift in coming back to work. I think she didn’t expect to get involved with the people that the firm represented in their cases. She forgot what it was like. There’s the scene in the pilot when she realizes, “I can’t do this. These are real people. I forgot what this was like.” But then as she gets into it, she feels a tremendous reward. It’s like that old cliche they say to people who are in mourning: go and do something for other people and get out of your own way. And that’s what happens with Matty. She gets very involved. And of course, her relationship with Olympia starts to grow. 

Matty loved being a lawyer before her daughter died. She loved her life, and this is awakening her to what she enjoyed with all of it. So it becomes tremendously complex for her to navigate those waters. Every day she goes in to work, to continue the mission, to not be discovered, but then to discover all these things she didn’t expect to discover. Her relationships, the people that she begins to feel close to, and she sees her daughter in the young people. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Matlock will continue with new episodes Thursdays starting Oct. 17 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.