‘Misery’ star Kathy Bates opens up about disagreeing with 1990 script

Kathy Bates, who is renowned for her role in Misery, spoke about certain changes she wanted to make in the 1990 horror movie.

The 76-year-old actress, who played Annie Wilkes in the movie based on Stephen King’s book, shared that she wanted the movie to get even more gruesome.

During her appearance at the 6th annual TCM Classic Film Festival, Bates talked about the film with director Rob Reiner and TCM host Dave Karger.

Bates went on to say that she was “crushed” that Reiner removed some of the gore from the novel, particularly the one in which James Caan’s character, who is being held hostage by Bates’ character loses his foot to replacing it with one where he injures the foot.

“I was crushed that you took that out. I didn’t agree with that at all,” she told Reiner, according to IndieWire.

Further into the conversation, the director shared that he was surprised by how differently both the actors approached their characters, “They come at acting in very different ways. Kathy is a brilliant stage actress and Jimmy didn’t want any rehearsal, he just wanted to be instinctive. So we found a way to rehearse more than Jimmy wanted and less than Kathy wanted, but it works.”