Before Kathy Bates was cast in Matlock, she set out on a personal journey.
“I’ve lost 100 pounds, and it all just coincided beautifully so that physically I’m capable of doing this show,” she told People in a video shared Oct. 9. “I don’t have to sit down. I can stand up all day long and walk and move and breathe and do so many things that I couldn’t do before.”
As the Oscar winner noted, she wanted to lose the weight for her health.
“I was diagnosed with diabetes,” she added. “It runs in my family, and I’d seen what my father had gone through. He’d had a leg amputation. One of my sisters is dealing with it very seriously. And it terrified me, and it just scared me straight. I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something.’ So I thought, ‘OK. I’ll give this a go.'”
Kathy said she changed what she ate and started using Ozempic. However, there’s a point she wants to clarify.
“The last year and a half there’s been a lot of talk, ‘Oh, she’s done this on Ozempic’ and stuff,” the Misery star continued. “And I just want to lay that to rest here. I lost about 80 pounds, and then the last 15 or 20 is always the hardest. So when Ozempic came out, I thought, OK, and I went to my doctor. She said, ‘Let’s give this a go.’ So I was able to do the last. But I have to impress upon people out there that this was hard work for me.”