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A few weeks ago, I watched the movie Dazed and Confused for the first time. I had no idea until I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole afterward that it was Mathew McConaughey’s first movie or that he got “discovered” when he met and drank with the movie’s casting director at a bar. That’s so freaking on brand.
Anyway, Matthew’s latest acting project is a movie called The Rivals of Amziah King. The film, which premiered at SXSW’s Film & TV Festival on Monday, also stars Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass. Matthew plays the title character and LookingGlass plays the foster child whom he is mentoring. To promote the film, Matthew did an interview with Variety in which he talked about Amziah, filming a non-voice acting role for the first time in six years, how writing his memoir, Greenlights, changed him, and what he thinks about his season of True Detective.
He was nervous to act again after six years: On the first day shooting “The Rivals of Amziah King,” Matthew McConaughey, his right eye swollen from a bee sting, walked onto the set, raised his hand and asked, “Is anybody else nervous except for me?” The cast and crew let out a collective laugh. “Alright, alright, alright, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one,” the actor said, sounding like a mixture of a preacher and a surfer with his signature drawl. But McConaughey wasn’t joking. He admits he felt creaky returning to the screen after a six-year hiatus, during which he wrote a memoir, “Greenlights,” recorded a few voice roles in films like “Sing 2,” spent time with his family and kept a lower profile. “I needed to write my own story, direct my own story on the page,” McConaughey says of his time away from being in front of the camera.
Why Amziah was the right project: “It’s not where I grew up, but I know of these kind of people and these places and these kind of characters that live in the middle of the country,” McConaughey says. “This group of people in southeast Oklahoma where the film takes place know the Constitution, they know the rules they are living by, and they’re not looking for or getting approval from the rest of the world. I understand them.”
Director Andrew Patterson always wanted Matthew for that role: Patterson had labored on the project for years, enlarging it at one point into a seven episode mini-series, before shrinking it back down again. He always felt that McConaughey possessed the free-wheeling charm that he needed for Amziah, who has a roving band of bee-keepers and musicians who follow him like a caravan of apostles. “I wanted an actor with the type of personality where he could just hang out with them for hours,” he says. “It had to be somebody so disarming, who would just do their thing inside this world I was trying to evoke, and who could be comedic in a dramatic movie. There aren’t many people like that.”
Acting is a ‘vacation:’ “I remembered a couple of things,” he says. “One, how much I truly enjoy performing. Two, I remembered, hey, McConaughey, you’re pretty damn good at this. And three, I remembered that acting is a vacation for me, and what I mean by vacation is that when I’m performing, it’s my singular focus. When I walk out the door in the morning, my wife says, ‘go kick some ass. I got the kiddos. We’re good.’ That’s vacation. Because I’m not multitasking. I’m not compartmentalizing. I’m fully focused on finding the truth of my character.”
Writing his book made him a better actor: “The memoir was extremely honest and it forced me to be honest with myself,” McConaughey says. “It cleared up things you’ve been thinking about for 35 years. And it makes you realize that’s kind of who you are, Matthew. Let’s admit that and shake hands. Bravo. That gave me even more trust in myself, because, you know, there was less to maybe hide about myself. I had shared it. So that’s made it easier for me to be honest as an actor.”
He thinks his season of True Detective is the best one: “I watched, I saw it. Yeah, there’s a lot about it that I appreciated,” McConaughey says, haltingly. “My favorite season — and I feel like I can say this objectively — is Season 1.” He’s picking up steam here, sounding tickled by his own admission. “I happen to be in that one, so I thought that was incredible, incredible television and a great series. I watched it weekly, like everyone else, on Sunday night, and that was an event for me. And I got to sit back and enjoy that. I loved the water cooler talk on Monday morning. Even though I made it, I sort of forgot what was going to happen next. It was one of the great events in TV.”
On his Amziah co-star, Angelina LookingGlass: “She only knows how to do what so many of us actors forget to do when we learn to quote, unquote, act, which is listen and respond honestly to the truth of a situation,” McConaughey says. “That’s it. That’s the secret. An actor doesn’t want to get caught acting. Every actor worth their salt knows what I’m talking about.”
I was curious to know what Matthew’s last role was, so I looked at his iMDB page. He’s credited as a voice cameo for Deadpool & Wolverine (Cowboypool) and starred in the animated movie Sing 2, which came out in 2021. Based on his description, I’m not sure if I’d classify acting as being a “vacation,” but I get the point he’s trying to make here. When he’s filming a movie, it’s the only thing that he’s focused on doing at the moment. He has been involved in a slew of other endeavors over the past few years, so I understand what he’s trying to say. Him saying that writing his book helped him become a better actor is also *peak* McConaughey, lol. But hey, a little bit of introspective is almost always a good thing.
Let’s see, what else? Those were some really nice words that he had about LookingGlass. I also looked her up and learned that she’s 20 years old. I look forward to seeing her in the role and where her career takes her. Oh, and he’s not wrong about the first season of True Detective being the best one. I really enjoyed the third and fourth seasons, but season one still holds the title. I said what I said.
photos credit: Getty and Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon