Kathy Bates chokes up discovering she didn’t leave mom out of Oscar speech: ‘What a relief’

Kathy Bates just experienced a wave of relief in the middle of an interview after discovering her memories of her Oscar speech were wrong.

In a conversation with “CBS Sunday Morning,” the “Matlock” star, 76, bemoaned the fact that she “forgot to thank” her mother when she won the best actress Academy Award for “Misery” in 1991. But Bates did, in fact, thank her mom in the speech, a fact that journalist Ben Mankiewicz pointed out.

“You know, you did thank her at the end of your speech,” Mankiewicz told her. “You thanked her.”

“No, I did not,” Bates replied. “I did not. You go back and look at it. I didn’t.”

So Mankiewicz pulled up the clip and showed the actress video of her thanking “my mom at home” on stage at the Oscars. Bates was shocked, putting her hands over her mouth and getting choked up.

“Thank you,” she told Mankiewicz. “Why did I think I didn’t thank her? Oh, what a relief.”

The “Fried Green Tomatoes” actress explained this revelation meant so much to her because her mom, a housewife who supported her as she pursued acting, “should have had my life.”

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“When she died, I said, ‘Come into me,'” Bates told CBS. “I wanted her spirit to come into me. Even though we had so many difficulties, I wanted her spirit to come into me and enjoy everything I was enjoying because of what she’d given up. Wow, thank you so much for that.”

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The actress also recalled her mother’s underwhelmed reaction to her Oscar win. “When I won the Oscar for ‘Misery,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what all the excitement (is) about. You didn’t discover the cure for cancer.'”

Bates is currently starring on CBS’ “Matlock,” a reboot of the classic legal drama series. In an interview with The New York Times last month, she revealed she paused her plans to retire to star in the show. “This is my last dance,” she told the Times.

But speaking to “CBS Sunday Morning,” Bates clarified she is now “not retiring,” adding, “I’d love to stay with the show as long as it runs, and I hope it runs a very long time.”