Kathy Bates Wants Dolly Parton to Play Matty’s Friend Cindy Shapiro on ‘Matlock’ in the Future

Kathy Bates is hoping the queen of country will join the cast of Matlock in the near-future!

At Paleyfest L.A. at the Dolby Theater, Hollywood, the Academy Award-winning actress revealed that she would like to see Dolly Parton portray Cindy Shapiro during the Matlock panel.

So far, viewers have heard a lot about Cindy from the stories that Kathy’s character, Matty, tells, but we have yet to see her on the show. Creator Jennie Snyder Urman dished on some of the tales Matty has spun throughout season 1 and what exactly goes on in the writers room.

“There are certain things that she comes back to a lot,” she told Variety in November 2024 about her quirky phrases. “She tells a lot of stories about Cindy Shapiro, and you’ll hear more about her. She says, ‘Believe you me,’ and she has certain things that she says a lot. Kathy also gives us some good ones.”

Fans are eager to see if the Cindy character will ever physically make an appearance on the hit show. Luckily, the series was renewed for season 2 in October 2024 after season 1 was an instant success.

“This reconceived MATLOCK was devised by Jennie Snyder Urman with a brilliant surprise plot twist, and we knew we had something very special the moment we saw the first episode brought to life by the incredibly talented Kathy Bates,” Amy Reisenbach, president of CBS Entertainment, said of the show’s renewal. “The audience reception and critical acclaim for it has been overwhelming. We can’t wait to get started on a second season.”

Season 2 of the show will air during the 2025-2026 broadcast season.

“The show, a reimagined version of the classic television series of the same name, has been ‘Certified Fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes with a 100 percent average Tomatometer score,” a press release from the network revealed.

At the event, Kathy, 76, also spoke about why she thinks a lot about her mom while playing the character.

“I think a lot about my mom with this character. And I feel like she she was one of the invisible ones, that she was so smart,” the American Horror Story alum said during the panel. “She should have been a lawyer. She wanted to be a lawyer, and she didn’t have the opportunity. She was born in 1907 so things were very, very different for her back then. So yes, I think she was invisible. I think about her a lot.”

Kathy never anticipated an opportunity like Matlock to come along at this point in her career. In fact, she was ready to give up acting for good before snagging the role.

“I was about to say sayonara before Matlock came along, because it’s very hard as you get older to find roles that you can spread your wings, but roles that people see you in,” she said during an interview with E! News on the red carpet at the 2025 Screen Guild Actors Awards on February 23. “And so I was really having second thoughts about whether to say goodbye.”

She was enthralled by the character of Matty when she first was approached with the script.

“When I read it, I saw it’s not just episodic, it has a whole substance underneath it, and we’re doing so well in all of the ratings. And it’s unbelievable. I just keep pinching myself,” Kathy said.