Matthew McConaughey says his True Detective co-star and close friend Woody Harrelson are considering whether to do a DNA test after realising they could possibly be brothers.
Speaking on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, McConaughey revealed the two actors had learned from his mother that she knew Harrelson’s father, possibly intimately.
“You know, where I start and where he ends, and where he starts and I end, has always been like a murky line,” the 53-year-old said. “And that’s part of our bromance, right? My kids call him Uncle Woody. His kids call me Uncle Matthew. And you see pictures of us and my family thinks a lot of pictures of him are me. His family thinks a lot of pictures of me are him.
“In Greece a few years ago, we’re sitting around talking about how close we are and our families. And my mom is there, and she says, ‘Woody, I knew your dad.’ Everyone was aware of the ellipses that my mom left after ‘knew.’ It was a loaded K-N-E-W.”
McConaughey said this comment motivated the two actors to investigate their family histories. “We went on to unpack what this ‘knew’ meant and did some math and found out that [Harrelson’s] dad was on furlough at the same time that my mom and dad were in their second divorce. Then there’s possible receipts and places out in west Texas where there might have been a gathering, or a meeting, or a ‘knew’ moment.”
Harrelson’s father, Charles, was a contract killer who was first convicted in 1960 for armed robbery. He was jailed in 1973 for murder and released after five years for good behaviour. In 1981 he was given two life sentences for the assassination of a district judge. He also claimed to have assassinated John F Kennedy, and died in prison in 2007.
In a 2012 interview with the Guardian, Harrelson said he got along with his father “pretty good”, adding, “[My parents] separated young, he was not around too much.”
Both McConaughey and 61-year-old Harrelson have two brothers each. They have appeared onscreen together in the film EDtv and the series True Detective, and are set to reunite in an Apple TV+ comedy show called Brother from Another Mother, in which they play fictionalised versions of themselves living together on a ranch in Texas. The show does not yet have a release date set.
McConaughey said the two men are still debating whether or not they will take a DNA test to confirm the connection between them.
“Look, it’s a little easier for Woody to say, ‘Come on, let’s do [DNA tests],’ because what’s the skin in it for him?” he said. “It’s a little harder for me because he’s asking me to take a chance to go, ‘Wait a minute, you’re trying to tell me my dad may not be my dad after 53 years of believing that?’ I got a little more skin in the game.”
