Woody Harrelson was angry Matthew McConaughey was methodical
Matthew McConaughey recently joined Woody Harrelson and Ted Danson on their “Where everyone knows your nameDuring the episode, Harrelson recalled wanting to “hit” McConaughey “so many times” during filming of the first season of “True Detective” because he was doing method acting.
“He’s methodical,” Harrelson said. “When we were filming, he was Rust Cohle [were] so many times I wanted to punch this son of a bitch in the face. I’m so angry at him because it’s in character.”
McConaughey explained that he had to be “stoic” between takes to stay in his character’s headspace.
“We’re sitting there. We’re about to start shooting and we were rehearsing,” McConaughey recalls. “I’m just a little stoic, Rust Cohle. Woody says, ‘Hey man, I gotta talk to you about something.’ He says, ‘The way you and I work, McConaughey, I hit the ball for you, you hit it back, I hit it back to you. We volley, we play. … Man, that’s us. It’s dramatic, but it’s also comedy. ”
In HBO’s “True Detective,” Harrelson and McConaughey played a pair of Southern investigators hunting a serial killer in the esoteric backwoods of Louisiana. Harrelson thought the show was too dark at one point and suggested to McConaughey during production that he add some jokes.
He recalled: ‘I remember saying to [McConaughey] Before we started filming, I was like, ‘Dude, people are going to expect to laugh with us. We need to throw some jokes in here.” He just says, “Mhm.” I’m waiting for him to say, “Yes, you’re all, no, none of that.” He just said, ‘Mhm, yeah.’
Season 1 of “True Detective” won five Emmy Awards and is still widely considered one of the best shows in the HBO catalog. Despite its continued popularity, Harrelson recently told “Today” that there is “no chance” he and McConaughey will return to “True Detective.”
“In all honesty, never. Not a chance,” Harrelson said. “Because it turned out great. I think it’s great that it turned out the way it did, and if anything, I think a new season would tarnish that.”
