Reba McEntire has enjoyed a marvelous career, and that includes her work on television. The actress thrived in the sitcom world thanks to Reba. Her co-stars were just as fond of their experience, with the likes of Steve Howey being completely open to a reboot, although Reba has her doubts if that’ll ever come to fruition despite the show’s success years ago.
In the following, we’ll take a look at how Reba’s acting career almost received a major boost thanks to a classic film. Reba was considered for a major role, which ended up going to Kathy Bates. In fairness, Bates thrived in the role, and we really can’t imagine anyone else in the particular role.
However, it would still be something had Reba agreed to the gig. We’ll take a look at why Reba turned down the opportunity, and how Kathy Bates felt about her time in the film, which was filled with ups and downs.
Kathy Bates landed some major roles throughout her career. Classics like Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and About Schmidt. However, she’ll always be remembered for her time in Titanic as the voice of reason, playing the role of Molly Brown in the 1997 classic.
However, despite the success of the film, Bates was quick to point out that there was a lot of pressure behind the scenes of the film, and many thought it was going to result in a complete disaster.
Bates tells EW, “There was a long shot, and a lot of people thought that it was gonna be a disaster movie of another kind, that it was never gonna make any money.”
Bates would go on to reveal that those behind the scenes would even make jokes about how bad the film was going to be, given its sizable budget and the fact that production kept dragging on.
“We got a very funny Christmas card that year because the shoot kept going on and on. Of course, they had to bring another studio on board to get everybody paid. I can’t remember his name now. It was such a funny card: It was a picture of himself, there was a bowl of soup under his nose, and in it, the Titanic was sinking, and he said ‘Merry Christmas.’ I think we all sort of lost faith at times, and thought, Oh, here we go. This is just gonna be the biggest bomb, but Jim was right…”
Cameron was indeed correct, as the film turned into an absolute classic and a monster at the box office, bringing in over $2 billion. Turns out, Reba McEntire could have contributed to the success of the film had it not been for her schedule at the time.
We really can’t picture another actress in the role of Molly Brown – however, thinking about the possibility of Reba McEntire in the role is at least intriguing. Speaking alongside Andy Cohen, Reba called this missed opportunity among the biggest regrets of her career.
She shared, “We were on tour, and I had a lot of people on the payroll,” McEntire explained. “We had these three months already scheduled to do the movie, and then they got behind on scheduling and said, ‘No, we’re going to have to move it in this time,’ so we couldn’t reschedule all the arenas and everything.”
Given the success of the film, Andy Cohen asked if the decision haunted her. Reba was quick to point out that she was just looking out for others at the time. “Well, sure! Absolutely,” Reba said about missing out on the role. “But you’ve got to take care of your people.”
Reba has been very honest looking back at her career. However, she doesn’t hold any regrets instead, she takes her past mistakes as valuable lessons along the way.
She revealed, “In retrospect, there are lots of things I would have done differently. know God put me through trials and tribulations like those because they taught me something and made me a better and stronger person.”
“There was a reason for them, so I can’t go back and change things. You can’t look back; you can’t look forward. You’ve got to live every day and plan for tomorrow. Live in the moment and enjoy what you have right now, this minute of this day. And remember, my friends: everything happens for a reason.”