The Misery star originated the role of Jessie in the 1983 Marsha Norman play, about a woman planning to take her own life, and never imagined it would impact her so much.
She eventually had to leave the show because it was too disturbing for her to play a suicidal character.
“Coincidentally my father had tried to kill himself because he had diabetes and he was facing an amputation,” she tells WENN. “My mother found him in time and revived him and I was ready to do the play in the fall.
“So he went ahead with the amputation and I was helping him one day with all that B.S. (bulls**t) you give, like, ‘Come on dad, you got a lot to live for… Blah blah blah…’ He was 83 and he said, ‘You know how I feel. You’re doing that play out there!’
“So I took that experience with me into the play and, as a result, over an 11 month period of playing it on Broadway, it got so close to me that I had to stop. I had to leave the play for a day or two and I realised you can’t be so screwed up… It was just, like, invading me. I realised I had to be professional and leave it on the stage.”
That lesson came in use when Bates was playing The Butcher in dark TV drama series American Horror Story.
“That was really horrendous,” she adds. “I’d go through a ritual where I take my costume and make-up off and I visualise removing all that negative energy from myself. I find that really helps.”
