(upbeat music)
I'm very excited.
She's never been here before,
she's got an Oscar and an Emmy,
she's starting Misery Titanic and fried green tomatoes.
(audience cheering)
Her new movie is called Richard Jewell,
it hits theaters in December.
Please welcome, Kathy Bates.
(audience cheering)
It's great to see you. A mess.
Have seat.
Yes.
Welcome to my June box.
Thank you, thank you.
(audience cheering)
I love your earrings.
Thank you.
Okay, now let's give you some shoe cam.
Okay, there's shoe cam.
They're cute,
there you go.
They're fish. Fitch?
Fish.
Fish, what's that?
It's a brand?
No, no it's a fish.
Oh, they are fish.
See? Oh, right.
See the little tail? The mouth and the tail.
Uh huh Yes
I see There you go
Cute, cute
(audience cheering)
I was gonna wear plain shoes
and then I heard about your foot cam
I thought "I gotta kick it up a notch"
Yeah, oh yes
(audience cheering)
Oh yes Oh yes, its the kind of show we are.
I like the short hair!
Thank you
It's
(audience cheering)
It's so thick.
Oh it looks thick?
Well I looked pretty cute there.
(audience laughs)
That's cute, you look like a biker chick there.
(laughs)
Well I gotta kind of Wolverine thing going on now.
I think-
It's good
Thank you
It's good. It's a pleasure to meet you.
Same here
(audience cheers)
So, um
Do you get, because I have to tell you,
if I were to see you in the mall,
I mean I would think, like hey...no,
and I'd keep walking.
Do you get recognized, like fanned out on?
Um
A lot?
Not now, which is great.
For a while I did. I got all those jokes about ankles
and stuff like that, you know.
But, thank goodness I don't get recognized that much
so,
(laughs)
I keep changing my look, so
But you know what, you have the perfect career
'cause you've been in countless movies
(audience cheers)
and countless things.
But to not be bothered,
to be able to just go out and be free
it must be great.
You didn't start this, things didn't really pop off
for you until you were, like, 42
correct?
Yes, 42.
I left New York in '85 and went out to Hollywood.
I actually did a couple of plays,
and Rob Reiner saw me in a couple of those.
Yeah
Yeah, and then he offered me the role in Misery, so.
(audience cheers)
And that was it!
What were you doing prior to,
how were you paying your bills at 42?
Like what were you doing to pay your bills
before then?
Well I was lucky.
In '76, a friend of mine from college
had written a really great play.
Uh huh
And so from then on I didn't have to go
into the unemployment line.
Okay, yeah Which was great.
So after that, I was able to cobble together work
Yeah
until then, so I was very lucky.
But I waited tables and, you know,
offices, and stuff like that. The usual stuff.
Yeah
So, American Horror Story,
(audience cheers)
What's that like?
Somebody told me that you feel as though
that saved your career.
It did!
You know the summer of 2012, Harry's Law got canceled,
so that was like a sock in the gut.
Uh huh.
And then I had come back from Europe,
and I wasn't feeling well and I went in
to the doctor and discovered
I had breast cancer.
Ooo.
And then I thought "That's it.
My career is over"
Yeah.
And then I had seen my friend Jessica Lange
(audience cheers)
She's so great.
I knew her from before,
and I saw her on American Horror Story
and I said "Can you get me a meeting with Ryan Murphy?"
Uh huh
And she said "Yes"
and so I went and met with him
and that's when he pitched Delphine LaLaurie.
Wow, good for you!
And through that, you were able to meet
a lot of new people, including Lady Gaga.
Yes, she's great.
She worked so hard.
Yeah.
I have never seen anybody work that hard.
I heard she had a really good party for the cast.
She did. She did.
She actually had her pool tinted red
for blood.
Wow
I got there too early, I'm so gauche.
(audience laughs)
I swear to god.
And she had just moved out to this wonderful house
up in Malibu,
and I went in,
and the foyer was kind of empty,
and her assistant met me at the door.
Then I was by myself, and then I looked up
and there was this curving staircase
and she had this 40's evening gown on her
and her hair up, and I thought,
She looks like Norma Desmond coming down there.
(Wendy laughs)
And she was really transforming into the countess.
Wow
You know, she just loves to play.
Uh huh, I like her too.
I've never met her, but
She's terrific
She's a good egg.
Yeah.
You were married at one point.
Mmhmm
Now what's your love life,
what's it like now Kathy?
Just asking.
(audience laughs)
I love myself
(audience cheers)
(laughing) Nothing wrong with that.
Back in 2016, you got your star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I did, I did.
(audience cheers)
And, at that point in your career,
did that mean a lot to you?
Or that was just as important as an Oscar
or an Emmy?
Like what made that stick out?
Oh, the lovely, lovely surprise
and it was bittersweet because,
when I was 8 years old,
I had my Aunt Lee,
and we used to go out to California,
and we have-
I think you may have a picture of my Aunt Lee and I.
There it is
(audience aw's)
I'm 8 years old,
and we're standing in front of
Graumen's Chinese Theater.
And when I got my star,
is about 20 yards to the right of us.
Wow (audience wow's)
So I was thinking a lot about her.
It was meant to be.
You know, I wish she could've been there.
She would have gotten the biggest kick.
Did you cry?
Yeah, it was just, you know.
She passed away from breast cancer
many, many years before.
Yeah
She was great
When I got my star, the one thing,
and here's what we have in common.
My one thing, (audience cheers)
No, but my one thing, Kathy,
is just that my lymphedema,
is that my ankles, and they're swollen,
and my feet are swollen, you know.
I wear sneakers all the time.
I can even wear a cute flat like you
because I already start with a large foot.
One thing that I told Willy in wardrobe,
"Please have something that covers lymphedema
but beautifully."
Like that's not how I want to be remembered.
I love,
the stockings are fabulous.
Right, well you know why?
Because lymphedema, shmym-phedema.
(audience laughs)
You can't let it stop your life. Do you know what I mean?
Say that again, because that's what I want to call it.
(says lymphedema incorrectly)
(laughs)
So here's what we have in common,
this is a very big deal to me,
and a shout out to our friend Bill,
over there, from the lymphedema,
(cheers)
Yeah he's the- (Kathy) Bill! There he is!
Bill! Bill is our CEO
for the lymphatic education and research network.
And I'm on the board! Are you on the board?
Well I'm their national spokesperson.
Yeah!
Yup
I heard you did a public service announcement
and everything!
I did. We've been trying and trying
to get the CDC to put us on one of their websites.
And so finally, we got to have a taping for that.
(audience claps)
So I have mine from here down.
Mmhmm
And there's nothing curable about lymphedema.
You all make fun of me. Well you know what?
Pick a finger.
(audience gasps and cheers)
But Kathy, you have yours on you arm.
Yes, I do.
Now do you ever wear sleeveless, or you-
I do. I do off and on. And I go for treatments.
I lost a lot of weight, and that's helped a lot.
Uh huh
But I still have to wear them when I fly.
I wear them all the time.
The tightening sleeves?
Yeah. Compression sleeves.
I don't like those. They're hard to put on.
Bill they're hard to put on. I like the machine.
I have the machine. Did you ever have the machine?
What I do, is I go to my therapist,
Doctor Emily Iker.
Okay
And she does the manual lymph drainage,
and she puts me in the machine like yours.
Look at my machine though.
Show the picture of my machine. I have that.
Yes
And I sit on it for, well they say 45 minutes a day,
but I sit on it, actually for 2 hours,
sometimes 1 hour. And it's the most soothing thing.
It is
I mean, it feels good, but its-
Its like a python or something-
Exactly. So to go get the massages,
the reason why I don't go
is because there's not enough time in the day
to be leaving your house
or somebody coming over and massaging you.
I know! My doctor is way on the other side,
and I was complaining.
I said "You're way out here in Santa Monica".
And she said "I have people coming from Nigeria-
Yeah
So get used to it".
10 million people, which I didn't know,
I don't know whether you knew,
of course you do.
10 million people suffer from lymphedema.
Yes
But only a small percentage of us
are getting the proper treatment.
Doctors are not informed as well as they should be.
You marched on congress, correct?
Yes
I wanna be there next time with you. (audience claps)
Oh that would be great
We have to at least create awareness.
That's right. And also, here's the other fact
that I want us to share with everybody.
Is that in four years of medical school,
doctors spend 15 minutes on the lymphatic system.
So they don't know how to treat patients
when the first come to them.
And like, in your case, you said you didn't know it.
And neither did the doctors.
They put me on no salt diets,
Yup
And then they gave me water pills,
and then they're like, go get massages.
Finally, I found the proper care.
As soon as he walked into the room,
he said he didn't even look down.
He says "I know what you have, lymphedema".
I was like "Am I dying? What is that?".
Yeah
Yeah Well the thing-
And I went with panty shorts and little sneakers.
He was like "But I see that you're brave enough
to show it"
I was like "Yeah, I'm not gonna let that stop me"
I don't think, you know-
(audience claps)
Believe me, I have seen women-
You are so lucky. I have to tell you.
You look fabulous. Thank you, but I know.
It can be all the way up.
I know
All the way
Good, look at you!
Boy, you've got some gams!
(audience cheers)
Thank you Kathy.
Look, let's stay in touch, okay?
In the name of lymphedema and good acting
this, everybody, is the one and only Kathy Bates.
(audience cheers)
Her new movie, Richard Jewell,
comes out in December.
For more information about our lymphedema,
go to wendyshow.com