Kathy Bates revealed that Garry Marshall refused to cast her in the 1991 film “Frankie and Johnny,” a role she had originated Off-Broadway, because seeing a man kiss her onscreen “would not be romantic.”
“He couldn’t make the leap that people would see me onscreen kissing someone,” Bates told Vanity Fair in an interview published on Tuesday. “Me actually kissing a man onscreen — that would not be romantic.”
Despite Bates being nominated for an Obie Award and Drama Desk Award for the role, Michelle Pfeiffer was cast as waitress Frankie opposite Al Pacino’s short-order cook Johnny.
She said that her looks were something she’d heard since she was a child. “Well, I’ve always had that,” Bates said, recalling that her father told her acting teacher, “You know, she’s not conventionally attractive.”
The issue came up again when she was cast opposite Aidan Quinn in another 1991 film, “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” where recalled a journalist asked Quinn — with Bates sitting next to him — “You’re a leading man. Is it believable that you and Kathy would be married?”
Bates shared that she was so upset, “I went upstairs, I locked the door, and I cried like a kindergartner.”
Of course, 1991 was also a banner year for Bates: She won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as villain Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner’s adaptation of “Misery.”
She said that receiving a standing ovation at the Critics Choice Awards for her work on “Matlock,” has been a pleasant surprise.
“It’s the affirmation of a career that hasn’t always been up here with the A-team going to Ibiza or whatever, you know?” Bates said.
Marshall passed away in 2016 at age 81.
The post Kathy Bates Says Garry Marshall Refused to Cast Her in ‘Frankie and Johnny’ Because She Wasn’t Pretty Enough appeared first on TheWrap.