Kathy Bates is looking back at her career and recalling why director Garry Marshall didn’t cast her in the film adaptation of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, a stage role she originated.
In a new interview, Bates opened up about getting passed over for the lead role in 1991’s Frankie and Johnny, which ultimately went to Michelle Pfeiffer, opposite Al Pacino.
“He couldn’t make the leap that people would see me onscreen kissing someone,” Bates said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “Me actually kissing a man onscreen—that would not be romantic.”
Bates said she has “always had that,” recalling that her father told her hometown acting teacher, “You know, she’s not conventionally attractive.”
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune was a 1987 Off-Broadway love story starring Bates as waitress Frankie and F. Murray Abraham as a short-order cook.
Bates also noted that in an unnamed film she starred in after Misery, she filmed an onscreen kiss that didn’t make the final cut. While promoting At Play in the Fields of the Lord with co-star Aidan Quinn, Bates recalled a British reporter asking Quinn, “Is it believable that you and Kathy would be married?”
Following the incident, Bates wanted time for herself and got on a plane only to find a magazine with Pfeiffer promoting Frankie and Johnny.
“I wanted to get on a plane,” Bates said after the crushing moment with the British reporter. “They said, ‘Actually, Ms. Bates, there’s one leaving right now.’ I said, ‘Great. Get me on it.’ I got on Virgin Air. Sat down. Picked up a magazine. It’s about Frankie and Johnny.”
In the same interview, the Matlock star said she “never felt that I belonged” in Hollywood, “but that’s okay.”
“I see them sail away in their gowns…. So now? It’s sweet revenge,” she added. “Oh, Miss Beauty Queen, you had a career up until your 40s and you can’t work? Too bad! I’ll think, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t say this; oh, you shouldn’t say that.’ But then I say, ‘F— it — I’m 76. Can’t I just say it?’”
The post Kathy Bates On Why Garry Marshall Didn’t Cast Her In ‘Frankie And Johnny’ & Why She’s Never Felt She “Belonged” In Hollywood appeared first on Deadline.
