Kathy Bates defends her weight loss journey against Ozempic critics

Kathy Bates is pushing back at speculation surrounding her recent weight loss.

During an interview with Variety, the 77-year-old Oscar-winning actress shot back at critics who attributed her 100-pound weight loss solely to Ozempic, a GLP-1 injectable medication traditionally prescribed to treat diabetes but recently used as a weight-loss medication.

“People say, ’Well, it was the Ozempic.’ F— you, it was the Ozempic! It took me years to do this. I got this diagnosis about diabetes — my father died of it; his mother died of it; one of my sisters is in peril,” she explained. “When they said ’diabetes,’ I figured out what to do to slowly, over years, to lose the weight. And then when Ozempic came along, I was able to lose the last 15 to 20 pounds and keep it off.”

Bates is making history this weekend as the oldest person to receive a nomination in the lead actress in a drama category at the Emmy Awards. She was nominated for her role as Madeline Matlock in the CBS reboot of “Matlock.”

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When speaking about the show, Bates said “the timing of it is great,” explaining “the juxtaposition of getting healthy” and then getting the opportunity to star in this show “is just unbelievable.”

“People say, ’Well, it was the Ozempic.’ F— you, it was the Ozempic! It took me years to do this.”

— Kathy Bates

Despite all the hard work she put into shedding the weight, Bates told Variety she is still adjusting to her new body.

“She had a beautiful dress for me to try. I looked at it on the hanger, and I thought, ’That’s not gonna fit.’ I put it on, and it fit, and I just melted down,” Bates said. “I just started crying and crying. I’m still figuring out what it’s like to be without all of that weight. What was it for? What was I hiding myself from? What are the emotions that are pouring out because I don’t have that armor? It just really surprised me, really shocked me.”

Bates first revealed she had lost 100 pounds in an earlier interview with Variety, in September 2024, telling the outlet she lost the weight over six or seven years.

She said the last time she was this thin was when she was a college student, adding that she was at her heaviest weight in 2011. In that time period, she starred as Harriet “Harry” Korn in the NBC legal drama “Harry’s Law.”

“I had to sit down every moment that I could,” Bates recalled. “It was hard for me to walk. I’m ashamed I let myself get so out of shape, but now I have a tremendous amount of energy.”

The actress previously addressed rumors she lost weight due to Ozempic, during an interview with People magazine in October 2024.

During the interview, she told the outlet that shedding weight was “hard work,” and that after losing 80 pounds on her own, she used the weight-loss drug to help her lose the last 20.

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“There’s been a lot of talk that I just was able to do this because of Ozempic,” Bates told People magazine. “But I have to impress upon people out there that this was hard work for me, especially during the pandemic. It’s very hard to say you’ve had enough.”

Her desire to get healthy came after she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2017.

One of the biggest changes she made was switching up her diet and cutting off eating after 8 p.m. In the interview, she admitted, “I used to eat terribly: burgers and Cokes and pizza.”

“I ate because I was afraid, and I ate because it was a f— you to my self-esteem,” she said. “[Diabetes] runs in my family, and I’d seen what my father had gone through. He had had a leg amputation. One of my sisters is dealing with it very seriously, and it terrified me. It scared me straight.”