People in stitches at Kathy Bates' foul-mouthed reaction to 2025 Critics Choice Awards win

People are loving the reaction Kathy Bates had when she won a Critics Choice Award for her part in Matlock.

She was up for the Best Actress in a Drama Series gong and seemed to be quite surprised when it was announced she was meant to go up on stage and collect the award.

It might have been a bit surprising after she was up for another award in this category last month and missed out, but at this ceremony it was her time in the spotlight.

She'd previously been up for the Best Actress - Television Series Drama award at the Golden Globes, but lost out to Anna Sawai from Shōgun.

Aware that the cameras were on her to look for her reaction, Bates jokingly tore up her acceptance speech and pulled a funny face, and she's won Golden Globes in the past anyway.

However, this time around at the Critics Choice Awards the accolade went to Bates, and she looked pretty shocked at the announcement.

Those of us who may be more gifted with the art of lip reading have suggested that her immediate response was to say the word 'f**k' a few times while everyone crowded round to congratulate her on her win.

omg I love Kathy Bates' stunned reaction after winning the Critics Choice award

"Fuck! Fuck! No, no, no!" pic.twitter.com/AH6JLUdXK2

— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) February 8, 2025

While she might have torn up her Golden Globes speech she did get up on stage this time to say a few words on her win.

It seems like the announcement that she'd won had come as a big surprise, as when she got up on stage for her acceptance speech she said 'wow I really didn't think this was going to happen'.

She said: "When we come to work every day, there's so much love on that set, and so many hundreds of years of experience, rolling the dolly, working the camera, the costumers, the crop people, they're just the top of the line, and walking onto that set is just it feels like a miracle. I'm so grateful to all of them."

The Matlock star also had kind words for her fellow cast and co-stars, and praised the firefighters who had worked to tackle the wildfires that spread across California last month.

Naturally, people were big fans of her celebrations and said she was 'such an icon'.

Plenty of people commented on how she was 'so surprised' to win the award as she was 'truly not f**king ready' for her name to be called out.

This is actually her fifth nomination and second win at the Critics Choice Awards, having picked up the Best Supporting Actress gong in 1999 for her part in the movie Primary Colours.

She'd been nominated for the same accolade again in 2003 for the movie About Schmidt, while in 2014 and 2016 she picked up a pair of TV nominations for her parts in American Horror Story.