Matthew McConaughey on Leaving Hollywood, Raising Kids with a Strong Foundation, and the Power of Faith | Ep. 1156

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i'd never been on stage i'd never done acting before um any any of that

today on the megan kelly show from small town texas to the bright lights of hollywood matthew mcconaughe burst onto the scene with a line that became legend all right all right all right from breakout star to king of the romantic comedies you ever think about that night in the park the nice guy rolls and nothing wrong with that i was so successful at him that any dramas i wanted to do hollywood was not offering me Even if I took a huge pay cut, they're like, no, no, no, McConaughey, stay in your lane.

At the height of all that fame, he walked away.

I was ready to do more dramas in life.

I was ready to stand up for things that I believed in and stand against things I didn't.

There was no parachute to pull here.

You might have just written yourself a ticket out of Hollywood quickly.

Only to return to greater glory.

And the Oscar goes to Matthew McConaughey.

That's when I started becoming more of a good man.

Redefining himself as one of the most compelling voices in film.

We all got good wolves and bad wolves in us.

It's our choice to which wolf we want to feed.

I'm trying to do my best to feed the good wolf, knowing that the bad wolf's still hungry.

Today he's here to share the lessons from that incredible ride.

This is a rodeo.

If you want to get into this, I'm not saying you got to have thick skin, but you've got to know what's important to you.

Knives are going to come at you whether you deserve them or not.

Fair has nothing to do with this.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly.

We have a first-time guest on the show today who you likely know very well, or think you do.

Matthew McConaughey is an American actor and an Academy Award-winning one at that.

He's also a best-selling author.

He's a husband, he's a proud dad, and he's a deep thinker who is out with a new book in which he shares decades of reflections.

Poems and prayers is the name of it, and it's out right now.

Matthew McConaughey, welcome to the show.

Megan Kelly, good to be here.

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I love the book.

I thought it was so...

Thoughtful.

It made me stop, reflect, and be more thoughtful about everything from faith to my own life philosophy in terms of getting after it or downshifting into a lower gear.

And I didn't realize how much I had in common with you, Hollywood man, because you're really more of a Texas man who's been through a fair amount.

Let me kick it off on sort of a somber note.

One thing we have in common is we both lost our dads at very young ages.

You, by my calculations, were 22.

I was 15.

They went suddenly thanks to heart attacks.

And in both of our cases, it changed, of course, our lives, but also our life choices and our life philosophies.

Can you kick it off there?

Like the you before you lost your dad and the you after.

Yeah.

So

I don't know about you, but I, at that time, I mean, I didn't think my dad could die.

You know, I mean, I knew practically he had to one day, but I thought he was the abominable snowman.

And

what I didn't, I didn't, there wasn't, there wasn't any lead up to it.

There was no fair warning.

There was no like, oh, it's time's coming.

It just happened and happened the way he said it was going to happen.

Said, boys, when I go, I'm going to be making love to your mother.

And it was a frisky Monday morning at 6 a.m.

And that's what happened.

And that's how he moved on from a heart attack.

It, I remember the call.

And I remember my knees dropping out from under me.

It was from my mother.

And she said, Your dad moved on this morning.

And

it was very unbelievable.

I didn't think it was possible.

And then

dealing with that, you know, going back to the wake with the brothers and

my mom and hearing stories where you find out that, oh, the message maybe was a little different than the messenger, which I was quickly able to forgive because I understood that to just be a reality.

But

the loss,

just keep living.

My phrase came from that because I remember when I went back to work six days later, I was on the set of Days Confused, my very first film.

And I was talking with the the director, Richard Link later at Magic Hour Sundown.

We were walking around the football stadium.

I was like, you know, he's physically no longer here, but spiritually,

I think I can keep calling him.

I can talk to him whenever I want.

I can pick up the phone.

Got to keep him with spirit alive.

And that's where Just Keep Living came from.

Added on top of that, look, I was scared because he left, my crutch was gone.

He was to me, what was above the law, above government, above religion.

Boy, if I was in a pinch and really need someone someone to have my back, that was going to be my dad.

And now that crutch is gone.

Now that that parachute's gone.

And so I quickly was like, okay,

boy, talking to myself, better quit acting like the things your dad taught you to do and be and start becoming the man that he taught you to be.

And that's been a process that I got kick-started in right then, very hardcore, but I've tried to maintain throughout my life.

Did he want you going into acting?

You had just started.

You weren't like the big star yet, although dazed and confused was a hit.

But did he want you to do it?

This was before, and I want to say this, there's a very graceful thing in hindsight about his death.

He was alive for the first five days of me shooting Dazed and Confused.

He didn't come to the set or anything, but he was alive for me to start, his final son, to start something that wouldn't be just a fad, that wouldn't just be a hobby, start something that became a career.

I've always seen some grace in that.

But the call that I had with him two years prior to that, while I was headed towards law school at the University of Texas, and it was a Tuesday night.

I planned it.

I said, I'm going to call on it Tuesday night at 7.30 p.m.

It won't be Monday because there's too much stress about getting back to work.

It'll be Tuesday.

End of the day, he'll be on the couch having a beer with Bob.

It'll be a great time to tell him that I want to go to film school instead of law school.

I made that call, 7.36 p.m.

And he answered, he said, what's up, Monkey Man?

I said,

hey, Pop.

Got something I want to share with you.

He said, what's that?

I said, I don't want to go to law school anymore.

I want to go to film school.

And there's a long pause.

And I was like, like, oh, here it comes.

He's about to go, you want to what?

And he didn't.

He said, you sure that's what you want to do?

I said, yes, sir.

Another long pause.

And he said, well, don't half-ass it.

So he gave me more than license.

He gave me rocket fuel to go do it.

Did he have any reason at that point to believe in you?

Had you been the big star on the high school stage?

No, I'd never been on stage.

I'd never done acting before.

Any of that.

I think what he heard, though, is something I think we would all want to hear from our kids is a time when they're asking us or telling us I wasn't really asking him.

I was going to do it.

Right.

And I think he heard that in my voice, the way I said, yes, sir.

I didn't stutter.

I didn't blink.

I didn't whisper.

I was, he heard the security in my voice that I had gone through to make this decision.

And hearing that from me was, I think, where he was like, okay.

My son's asking, but he's not really asking.

And I think we all want to hear that from our children at some time after we give them guidelines.

But if they're going to break out of those guidelines to go their own way, don't come a bluffing.

If you're going to do it, do it.

And he heard that.

And that's where he came up with telling me, don't have passage.

But where did you get the confidence for that?

Because there are millions of kids out there right now who would love to be a Hollywood star.

They're from Texas.

They have no connections to the industry.

It's a pipe dream.

It's not, odds are overwhelmingly against you.

So how did you think?

Yeah, why not me?

Well, so I started off.

I wasn't courageous or confident to say i wanted to be in front of the camera yet but i was at that time courageous enough to say i want to go into the field the storytelling business so i went to film school study behind the camera all right and i had been writing a lot of short stories at that time and i had a buddy of film school who said these are really good short stories you might be able to want to turn these into moving pictures it wasn't until a year later that I was in the right bar at the right time.

I got cast and days confused and got in front of the camera and three lines turned into three weeks work.

All right, all right, all right.

And I'm getting paid $320 a day.

And people are telling me I'm good at it.

Will you please come back tomorrow and do it again?

And I was like,

hell yeah, I'll come back again.

Is this even legal?

I'm having so much fun.

And you're telling me I'm good at this?

I can make a living doing this.

That's where I got the confidence.

And then continued on.

And look, Megan, I didn't go to Hollywood and have the long story of having to wait the tables for so long.

I actually went to Hollywood.

And the first two auditions I went on, I actually got the job.

It was Angels in the Outfield and Boys on the Side.

So I had some dry spells later on in my career, but boy, when I first got out there,

I knocked out the first two auditions.

You got them.

Well, I'm not surprised to hear that you were a writer because when I read Poems and Prayers, it was obvious.

And the thing that's special about the book is that it's a collection of poems and prayers from back when you were a teenager, when you were like 18.

Yeah.

And I wonder, like, I have been an avid journal keeper for most of my life, but when I occasionally pull out the ones from that period, it's awful.

very

and you had the courage to put it down in paper and publish it.

So how does that feel reading back on the earlier ones?

So I went back and saw the early ones and look, you know, even in writing green lights, part of that was going back and looking at 35 years of my journey.

Your memoir.

And I looked at some of that stuff and I was like, oh, good gosh, the shame, the guilt going, oh, are you kidding me?

Look at the arrogant little brick you were.

Who do you think you are?

But then after a while, I started to chuckle at those things.

And that's why I added this point, that poem in this book, which isn't a bad poem, but it's a very self-serious poem of an 18-year-old boy asking some big existential questions when you would think he would just be having a great fun time summer under the sunshine.

And I added it because

it was a time I gave a damn at 18.

I still give a damn.

I'm still working on.

trying to be a better man.

I'm still questioning what's going on in the world.

I'm still, you know, pointing out stuff that I think is mendacious and not fair in the world.

And I'm asking those questions and I still do.

So to see that I was doing that at 18, I'll mind you, you could tell I had a thesaurus near.

I used some words in there that I'm like, you don't know what that meant.

And I still don't know what that word meant.

But

I had a thesaurus near me.

You know what I mean?

But when I read the early writings, I think this is obviously an artist.

Like this is an artistic person.

It should be no surprise that this person did not wind up in law school and instead wound up.

in the arts, really telling stories and bringing characters to life.

So it's a fun, it's kind of funny to me to think of you going to law school.

But you talk in the book, you write in the book about your previous, maybe current, commitment to logic and reason and how much that has appealed to you for your first 55 years.

But now you're kind of in a different phase.

So it does make some sense.

It's just not that common to see both the strong logic and reasoning thread coupled with the artistic and creative ability and Jones.

So when I was in kindergarten, I was standing on the street corner outside the school and the

head head principal came out and I was sitting there looking up at the sky at this cloud.

And I said, Mr.

Mayor, is that a cloud as big as the world?

And he goes, yes, Matthew, it is.

So in my whatever kindergarten, however old I was, five-year-old mine, six-year-old mom, was like, well, if I can see the edges of that cloud, and it's as big as the world, and I know that that road trip we took from Texas to Pensacola took whatever 15 hours and it was just that long on a map.

If I can see the edge of that cloud, that cloud must be so far up in the sky that it's not even worth dreaming about.

So I'm going to put my head down.

Forget Air Force, I'm Army.

That was went through my head.

I was like, you got to deal with what's right in front of you because what's out there is too far away.

So for 15 years, I just put my head down and dealt.

Didn't dream.

You know, at 16 years old, I take my first flight, commercial flight, and in 10 seconds, I'm in the middle of that cloud.

And I'm like, either this cloud goes a billion miles an hour or that cloud is not as big as the world is like Mr.

Mayer told me it was.

Well, so I then come to learn, oh, clouds aren't that big.

They're not that far away.

And all of a sudden I was like, oh, well, so what's over the horizon is actually worth considering.

What's out there that you don't see right in front of you is worth dreaming about.

But still, the fact that I've always dealt and looked to logic, you know, us doers, I've always been a doer.

And us doers, we climb mountains.

Well, we're good climbers.

But because we got our head down, we don't always climb the right mountains.

Us dreamers, you know, look up and are always kind of measuring in the landscape, which doesn't make us very good climbers, but we pick the right mountains.

So doers can help dreamers, you know,

climb more mountains and dreamers can help doers climb the right ones.

And but I didn't start dreaming until I moved to Longview until I was about 16 years old.

So

something, you've made some good choices with that combination because I look at you and you seem to me very much like an outlier.

You, we talked about, you know, the writing ability, which not everybody in Hollywood has.

A lot of people just want to be on camera.

A lot of people just want to be a star in my industry too.

Poems and Prayers is the name of the book for those listening.

So you've got writing ability.

You move out to California, you get cast in the first two things that you apply for, you try out for, audition.

You become a star pretty quickly.

And then unlike virtually everybody who follows that path with success, you leave Hollywood, you go back to your native Texas.

You choose to raise your children there.

You get married.

You're in a long-term marriage.

Like your marriage works, which is rare in your industry.

industry by the way you're not the first mccanahey i've interviewed your lovely wife came on my show when i was at nbc

there we go

and so all of these things suggest you're of a different mold and model than the average person out there that you have to me a different value set and i think that's embodied in your book because what i see in here is you love america you're a man of faith But like most of us who are people of faith, you struggle with it.

What does it mean?

How far can it take me?

How humble,

you know, how can I humble myself in order for it to really mean something to me?

You love your children, you prioritize them over your job and realize they're both important, but one is clearly the winner.

So, I wonder whether that's all the job of the parents and Texas, and whether you think all of this would have happened for you if you hadn't pulled up out of Hollywood and gone back home.

Hmm.

So,

the main reason I came back, one of the main reasons I came back home is, is, is I did go out there to Hollywood long enough.

I want to get myself established, you know,

enough, enough credentials to say, oh, you can't just rock my boat and I'm gone, you know, and also enough credentials where, you know, if they want me, they know where to find me.

And if they want me, I will plan my routes out to Hollywood and line up meetings for two weeks and just go knock them all out.

You know,

along the way, it was also my mom's here.

My brothers are here.

As soon as Camilla and I decided to have children, I wanted them to be raised here near my home and around their family.

I wanted them to be raised with the maybe what you could say is a little more common sense values that I feel is around here, where a mile feels like a mile and 60 minutes feels like an hour.

It was a natural coming home for me.

It was also at that time, I was doing romantic comedies and I was the rom-com guy, and I loved doing them.

And I hope to do more later on.

Wedding planner with J-Lo.

How to lose a guy in 10 days with Kate Hudson.

Hi.

Benjamin Berry.

Andy Anderson.

Oh, you are already falling in love with me.

Sarah Jessica Parker in one.

Failure to launch.

Yeah.

I had a nice time.

I did too.

Good night.

Good night.

I was rolling in the rom-coms, successful, enjoying the heck out of them.

At the same time, I was so successful at them that any dramas I wanted to do, Hollywood was not offering me.

Even if I took a huge pay cut, they're like, no, no, no, McConaughey, stay in your lane.

Like, okay.

Well, if I can't do what I want to do, I'm going to quit do what I'm doing.

So moved back down here,

dropped out.

You didn't see me in any rom-coms.

You didn't see me shirtless on a beach.

You didn't know where I was.

And I knew it was going to be a bit of a desert I was walking into because I was like, I might have just wrote wrote my one-way ticket out of Hollywood.

And Camilla and I prayed on it, cried on it, and said, I'm going to do it and stick to the decision.

And she goes, you know, this might last a long time.

You don't know.

There's no parachute to pull here.

You might just written yourself a ticket out of Hollywood.

And I was like, yeah, but it's non-negotiable.

This is what I'm going to do.

Well, months went by and nothing.

Six months go by, nothing.

A year goes by.

I talked to Majority.

He goes, Matthew, I haven't even heard your name.

You know, luckily at this time, Camilla's pregnant and I, and we've got our first child coming on, which really anchored me to have a little significance, you know, in a time when I was feeling very wobbly without anything, any work to do.

18 months go by, and I remember this, the script comes in, there's Romantic comedy, $8 million offer.

I said, no, thank you.

$10 million offer.

I said, no, thank you.

$12 million offer.

I said, no, thank you.

$14.5 million offer.

I said, let me read that again.

And let me read it.

I'll tell you something.

The same words as the $8 million offer, but it was better.

It was more well written.

I could see this working for me, you know?

But ultimately, I said no.

And I think that sent a little bit of an invisible message to Hollywood.

Oh, McConaughey is not bluffing.

He's onto something here.

He's actually playing offense and affirmatively where he is.

And cut to four months later, all of a sudden I get the calls for the dramas that I want to do.

And I just attacked him.

So that was a step out of Hollywood where I needed to rebrand and unbrand, really, before I rebranded.

And then when did Dallas Buyers Club come?

2013.

So that's about four years, three years I think into that into that run after the two-year hiatus.

30 days.

I'm sorry.

Fuck this.

There's some shit.

Fucking 30-day motherfuckers.

Let me give y'all a news flash.

There ain't nothing out there can kill fucking Ron Woodruff in 30 days.

Which led to Academy Gold.

Was that before and after for you?

Or like, was that actually a game changer or no?

Because you'd already re-jiggered and relaunched.

Well, look, it was a game changer in that, hey, there's my peers.

Saying, we deem your performance the most excellent male aid performance of the year.

That meant a lot to me.

Sure as hell did.

It wasn't something that I've ever been out to prove or anything, but to get that from my peers in the craft, a lot of them who I respect,

that felt really good.

Now, one of the things that's funny about

winning an Academy Award is that things you say afterwards, especially immediately afterwards, the things that used to be in small print are now in bold print.

Even if you're repeating something you said 10 years ago, all of a sudden it's in bold print.

And they're like, wow, that's original.

I go, man, I've been saying that for 15 years.

Now it's in bold print.

But it did open up, it opened up a lot of opportunities for me that I've tried to take advantage of as responsively as I could.

And hey, I can't.

But then here's my question for you.

When Robert Downey Jr.

won,

he was best supporting actor this past, like a year ago, I think, if memory serves.

I'm not as into it all, but I loved his opening line, which was, I'd like to thank my unhappy childhood.

Which is like,

so good.

And probably true for a lot of actors, right?

Like, that's where you get all the stuff that you can draw on, the stuff that you could put into a book like poems and prayers.

But is it true for you?

No.

No, it's not.

And, you know, I had a time where right after I called my dad and said I was going to film school.

And he said, don't half-ass it.

I get into film school.

I'm a frat guy.

I wear jeans, impress my shirts, and they're tucked in.

And I go see blockbuster films on the weekend.

I got into film school on my GPA because I had a 3.82 GPA.

I didn't have a piece of art.

So I get into film school and everyone's in there wearing black and they're gothic and no one's got a tan.

Here I am.

I got a tan frat guy, jeans, you know, and I'm questioning, wait a minute, do I need to be this sort of Amelesian, you know, problems in life to be an artist, you know?

And I remember we'd have Mondays where you'd come back to the class and you talked about what you saw that weekend.

And I'd always come back and go, hey, man, I just saw diehard, you know, and they'd come back and go, I saw the Eisenstein thing at the Independent, Independent, you know.

Anyway, every time I bring up the blockbuster, like I saw Die Hard, they'd all go, Oh, that's shit.

That's corporate bullshit, man.

It's not on it.

And I'm going, oh man, I'm getting hammered here.

Maybe I'm not an artist.

And then one day I came in.

One day I come in and I say the blockbuster it was.

And actually, the one I'd said this day was Die Hard.

And they go, oh man, that's bullshit.

And I said, hang on a second.

Hang on just a second.

I go, did y'all see it?

And they go,

well, no, no, I mean, we're just saying, you know, I was like, oh, bullshit.

No, you can't just say because it was populous, it came from a big studio and it played in a blockbuster that it's that it's crap.

I enjoyed it.

And that's when I went, I'm going to keep my shirt tucked in.

I'm going to keep my talent.

I'm standing in a frat house.

I'm rolling.

If I want to go spend the weekend watching Shark NATO, why should they be allowed to stop me?

Come on.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

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The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them.

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We absolutely have to keep talking.

It's more important now than ever.

To cower, to hide, to go silent is not the answer.

And all I can tell you is there is no fucking way I am canceling one stop on this tour.

Not one stop.

I'm going.

I'm going to stand on these stages and I'm going to say all the things that we say all the time on this show.

We're going to make it safe for me.

We're going to make it safe for my team and my guests and you.

We're going coast to coast and do something really important, which is say what's true and what's real to honor him.

I really now more than ever would love to see you all face to face.

God, I would love to see you face to face.

I need to see you face to face.

I am doing this tour, and I would love for you to join me.

MeganKelly.com for the tickets.

I don't know.

What do you think of that?

Because there's been, I'll say, I just gave my own complaint on it.

And you saw the New York Times movie critic resigned two years ago saying,

I can't, I can't with just like the non-stop action hero movies.

Like, I miss plots.

I miss drama.

I miss like real crescendos and genius, decrescendos, and plots that expose human frailty.

Like, what happened to those movies?

And you and I grew up at exactly the same time.

I know you know what he's talking about, what I'm talking about.

Yep.

Can we get back to that?

I've heard Matt Damon do a riff on this, suggesting the way the studio system is set up now.

No, what do you think?

So, here's what I've noticed is happening as we're going into streaming.

Like, I've got this, I've got a film coming out, the lost bus.

Is there anybody that can go and pick these kids up?

It is a film built for the big theater, for the big stream.

We have a two two-week run, limited screens in LA, New York, and London before we stream straight to Apple Plus.

That's where it's going.

And I feel like the streamers want to go, let's forget even the two-week theatric release.

Let's just go straight to streaming.

Now, the problem with that is that you've seen it.

Everyone sees it.

You go on one of these streamers and you see this catalog of films.

I don't know about you, but I'm like, when did they make that?

It's one of my favorite actors.

When did they make it?

I didn't even see it.

I didn't even hear about it.

So everything's kind of dropped down to a low-common denominator in a library.

So there's no exclusivity.

that you get of a precious, oh, it's come out in the theater.

Oh, if we want to see that actor or actress or director's film, we have to go out on Friday night when it opens and see it.

It doesn't have that as much.

And I hope we can maintain that.

What's also happening is in this abbreviated attention span capacity that we talk about that people have, what studios are first cutting is the first acts of films.

Now, the first act is where you set up the world for the viewer that tells you, you may know where this story goes, but you've never been there with me.

So it's going to be specific.

I'm going to set you up with an original show.

The conflict that starts in Act Two, which is usually on page 38, now is on page 11.

It's like, start it, meet you, hi, know what you do, bam, conflict.

Let's get on with it.

No one wants to wait around, or the studios don't believe they want to wait around for an interesting first act.

It's what was so pleasurable about doing True Detective.

Up your ass, Cole.

Why don't you do your own fucking legwork, you rat fuck?

Say it again about me.

Hey.

It was an eight-part series.

For three and a half hours, I get a first act, which is an actor's dream because that's where I get to go, here's how you could go on this journey with me that you've never been in or this relationship that I have with Marty Hart.

And I hope we don't keep abbreviating getting to know characters and relationships that are specific and original.

Because if we do, everything's just going to feel like somewhat the same movie.

I can relate to this, believe it or not, just going from cable news to podcasting.

It's much the same,

only like the reverse, right?

Because the cable news, you got to get up and down on it quickly and move on.

There's no chance to establish the character's background or fall in love with them or what have you.

Just got to get, you know, what's the news in and out.

Whereas in podcasting, you can build the story.

You can help the audience get to know this character before you zero in on really why they're here.

Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, you'd know this.

You just said it.

I mean, and I didn't learn this for 10 years from doing press for a film or a book.

You know, you go on, I remember the first time I went on, like, Leno, you know, you get four minutes up there.

And I want to go, well, you know, the thing, you're already, uh-uh, Zap, this is not the format for the long term.

So you learn, you pick your spots about what's my message, what's my window, how do I hit it?

But for people that are interested in stories.

I want to, I don't ever want to lose the longer format.

And will there be a rebellion back to people going, I don't want a short snippet.

No,

I want the longer format.

I want to take the time.

They can hear it on audio now.

They can drive it and listen to it.

We're watching.

They're consuming information differently, which I think will lead to a desire for more meaningful conversations.

I just think it's, that's why these other models are, they have limited shelf lives.

And no offense to the superhero action movies, because there's definitely an audience for those, but longer form storytelling is still an art form that many of us thirst for and would absolutely consume with you know a lot of dollars.

Now, in the lost bus, it's you have an interesting situation because you have your son.

Your son, Levi, is starring in it, 17 years old.

And I've actually, so I'm kind of drafting behind you on the childhood front because my kids are almost your kids' ages, they're uh 15, 14, and 12.

And now that they're getting to be like real humans, you know, like we're

on the cusp of adulthood, I've asked myself this question about nepotism, the nepo baby.

And, you know, when you're the mother of a kid who's, you know, through no fault of their own is born to you and you might be a public figure, it's hard to call it that, you know, as opposed to like, well, if my kid wanted my help getting into my industry, I'd probably give him an open door and then let him take it.

And you were recently in this position.

Can you tell us what happened?

Yeah.

And that nepotism question is a really good one because I don't want my kids kids to ever feel entitled.

At the same time, do I believe with people in my own life outside of my family that if you want to know where the arrow is going, look at where it was shot from.

So there's real practicality to that.

My son, as I pitch films that I'm in to my family all the time, my son comes to me and he knew that there was a role as a young boy to play my son.

He says, how old?

is that kid?

I said, he's about 13, 14, which was Levi's age at the time.

And he goes, can I read for it?

And I was like,

kind of just straight-faced him and walked off.

I wanted to see how much he wanted it.

If it was just a whim or what he comes up four more times over the next week, can I read for it?

Can I read for it?

Can I read for it?

And I said, Okay, you want to read for it?

Let me tell you what this acting thing is about.

This is not just a little, hey, hey, what if hey, I'm going to teach you something about this?

You got to revere this craft and you got to work at it.

So let's work on this character right now.

We'll get a read.

We did.

I put it on camera.

I saw on camera.

I was like, oh, he's got presence.

He can hold a frame.

He's being honest in front of the camera.

That's good instincts.

Okay.

i sent it to the casting director and i said uh uh francine i think this may be good enough for callback what do you think and she wrote back said i think it's good enough to send to the director i said oh okay will you do me a favor will you pull his last name off because i just don't want it if it preceding you know anyone's opinion to help or to help her any she goes yes right you don't want to send the message i'm phoning in a favor here Hey, you know, kind of A, it's playing my son.

If you do me a favor, I would not make that call and I'm not going to make that call.

Again, open the door.

But once you get in the door, son, daughter, you go handle.

But I did open a door.

I had access to get his read to the cast director.

Well, the director sees it and says, that's the kid.

She goes, well, that happens to be Matthew's son.

He goes, even better.

So he got the role.

Which makes, I'm very proud of, and he did it on his own merit and his own talent.

Okay, but now let me ask you about part two, part two.

So then he, so he stars in it.

It's about to launch.

And now I think at this point in the process, I haven't yet gotten there.

And none of my kids have said they want to go to media.

I'm just saying like, I would help them.

I think I'd be living in terror of bad reviews, of nasty internet trolls.

It's one thing when they come for us.

Who cares?

We're used to it.

But come for my kid.

I mean, that's the kind of thing I might toss and turn over at night.

I have not tossed and turned.

And maybe that's because I said, get ready for it.

It's going to happen anyway.

I said, your last name is going to get you praised in places maybe you didn't deserve it.

It's also going to get you you slammed in places you don't deserve it.

So this is a rodeo.

If you want to get into this, I'm not saying you got to have thick skin, but you got to know what's important to you and you got to be ready.

Knives are going to come out at you whether you deserve them or not.

Fair has nothing to do with this.

So if you love doing the craft enough and you're good at it, you stick your, put your head down and do that.

And the rest of that, you've got to have thick skin about because that's going to happen.

Fair has nothing to do with this.

That's a great life lesson.

In the book, you write in Poems and Prayers, you write, I wrote it down.

Your number one job is helping your kids become who they are, not who you want them to be.

Shoot it into my veins.

It's exactly right.

So many people don't get it, Matthew.

They think the kids are a do-over.

And you've come to the same realization that Doug and I have, which is that DNA thing has a lot to do with how they show up.

And

we just kind of fool ourselves that we're the big maestros about where it's going.

But that was the biggest surprise to me about having children.

I thought it was 90-10 environment culture to DNA.

And all of a sudden, I was like, oh, it's closer to the opposite.

Right.

Yes.

Totally.

But that's, I mean, I would imagine, especially in Hollywood, that's not a lesson everybody understands, you know, because it's a very hard-charging group.

I don't mean to dump on Hollywood non-stop, though I'll be honest, my audience can't stand Hollywood.

But it's a very hard-charging group of people.

Yeah.

that have made it in a very competitive industry.

Like they've made it at the top, so they've got to be somewhat cutthroat.

But then you have a kid, and everybody out there is probably facing a similar challenge, which is how do I maintain my kids' competitive drive,

notwithstanding the fact that they've been born into a life of luxury and privilege, et cetera, right?

And like,

I don't know.

I think too many parents would default to,

I'll make him a killer, as opposed to, I will sit back and figure out, like, let him figure out whether he wants to be a killer.

Well,

you know how it is.

I mean,

it's, it's, there's a lot of parents, and you probably know them as well, that from my money, I think, become or want to be friends with their children when they need to be parents to them.

And that friend to their children is sometimes a bit of that do-over, hey, maybe you can pick up where I left off and become a better version of me, which is, that's not what a child's act I'm asking for early on.

You know,

do-overs.

I think that kids want us to be a parent to them early on.

Are you more traditional dad?

I mean, I know you're married to a Brazilian woman, and I have a lot of Brazilian friends.

I know that they tend to like a more traditional man.

And you're from Texas, so I kind of feel like you'd be more of a trad dad.

But are you?

Look, I'm more, I go, I call it, and this is not a political term, but I call it conservative, very liberal late.

I want my kids to know how to block and tackle, know your manners and graces and arithmetic and respect before we're going to go fly a freak flag and say, whatever.

So I think art emulates life.

I want them to learn who they are and who they are not in life

before.

they're going off into imaginations.

Now, you can create whoever it is you want to be, but let's have a foundation that we understand about about how we act and how we treat ourselves and each other before we go off into, you know, la-la-land of dreams and creation.

Again, how I grew up, learned to deal before I learned to dream.

That's how, that's sort of my look at it.

I believe in consequences.

I believe in discipline.

I also believe that sometimes, as I'm learning right now, I did not know, Megan, that I always thought you went from father to later on a friend.

And I did not know that there's a bridge in the middle there called big brother as a father.

And I'm able to be a big brother, especially now that my kids are teens and i can kind of put my hand on their back and maybe not judge them as quickly and go i know what you're talking about let me tell you this story about when i was in high school and the other great thing about teenage kids is i don't have to edit my good stories as much to them anymore

now which period of your life are the best stories from

oh i mean i've got some starting back from when i was

eight i think the best stories were probably oh man, every decade had a great story.

I would say

I could pick them out all over the place.

There's things I look back at that

I did when I was younger that makes me happy to be here and alive.

But there's been some great stories, which I cataloged along the way, and mostly in green lights and somewhat in poems and prayers.

I think there's been some pretty good stories along the way.

Well, you don't seem risk averse, both you've outlined it, leaving Hollywood and saying, I'm just going to do it differently.

That was a huge risk.

But your your life philosophy does not, as reflected in poems and prayers, does not seem to favor safe spaces.

It seems to favor take the big risks and don't die in your bed saying, I never got hurt.

Right.

Well,

that's a constant thing to measure, isn't it?

Because especially after getting successful, having a family, things that I've built that I want to maintain, that I'm not going to be foolish with.

All right.

At the same time, I don't want to get complacent and safe and go, okay, this is it.

Everyone, just huddle up, put your, you know, keep everything else out.

I still want to take risk.

And that's also, you know, something that I know

women, I'm sure they do too, but men go through in middle age.

You're at the bottom of the horseshoe.

Like, are we taking the risk anymore?

How do we still take a chance with the take the right kind of risk?

And I still want to take the right kind of risk, but I don't want to be foolish with what I've built because some of the stuff I've built is non-negotiably going to be on my table and in my life until I leave this one.

You know, I have that passage in poems and prayers.

I'm curious, you know,

is God happier if we take eight major risks in life and pull off seven of them?

Or is he happier when we take a hundred risks and pull off eight?

You know, it's like a little bit of that, you don't want you coming back money.

You know what I mean?

Right.

I think he's saying if you didn't take enough risk, if you did, maybe, maybe that's the sin.

You know what I mean?

And if you didn't, it's, it's, it's, you know, the sin comes from an archery term, to miss the mark.

That's what the word sin comes from, to miss the mark.

We miss the mark all the time.

And I don't want to quit taking the chances to miss the mark.

I want to make, want to hit the mark, but don't want to go out going, well, I never shot.

It's even harder when you've reached your level of success because now you do have a lot to lose.

You know, to keep challenging yourself, to keep making yourself go out there and take the big risks, it gets even scarier, right?

It's one one thing when you're up and coming, it's like, what the hell?

Or even when you're on the middle of the ladder, but when you're at the top of the ladder with all the things,

a lot of people would say, I'm going to stay.

I'm going to hold.

Yeah, I'll hold.

I'll hold.

You don't see, you don't feel that way.

I hope not.

Look, I've been told by many people that are close to me that my biggest asset is that I take risk.

I also think that that's what I need to take more of, that I don't take enough.

So as it is,

what could that look like for Matthew McConaughey McConaughey at 55?

Putting my cards on the table of who I am in this big movie that I'm living that was action was called The Day I Was Born and Cuts called The Day I'm Living This Life, the documentary that I'm living, that we're all living, putting it on and going.

And it's what I'm doing a bit of now.

And I still have a ways to go.

I'm creating characters that I believe in and want to play in my own life.

And saying, what are you doing live?

What's happening?

The camera's rolling.

It's been rolling since the the day we were born.

Why do you have to go off to do someone else that something else, someone that something else wrote and is directing and is in cinematographer and then editing?

Get rid of those filters.

What am I doing live?

Who am I live in life?

That's what I'm pressing myself on for the mainly for the last six years more so

than any time.

And I hope I'll continue to press on myself to do that.

That, okay, that leads me to one of my favorite pieces in the book,

which is on page 77, it's good man.

And you write as follows.

There's a difference between a good man and a nice guy.

A good man stands for certain ideals.

And when those beliefs are contested, a good man is not a nice guy.

No.

I love that.

Can you talk about how you came to that realization?

Yeah,

so.

You know,

part of it, I think the best example would be around that time I I was doing nothing but the rom-coms.

You know, those were, those were nice guy roles.

They worked.

I enjoyed them.

I was getting paid well.

They were easy to do.

They felt like a Saturday.

They're nice guy roles and nothing wrong with that.

But

I was ready to do more dramas in life.

I was ready to stand up for things that I believed in and standing against things I didn't in life.

And I wanted to also find roles that I could do that in.

That's when I started becoming more of a good man.

And that means you're going to run into conflicts.

That means you're going to have to go against the masses at certain times.

That means you're going to have to lead when you'd rather just sit back and watch sometimes.

That means you're going to have to run towards crisis instead of away from it sometimes.

That means you're not going to be proper.

That means you're going to receive the blades in the back.

And it's okay.

It's easier to.

I know for me, when my faith is stronger, because I can schluff those things off, because I'm going, no, no, no, I'm playing an immortal game here.

Stay, that's the game I'm playing.

Don't worry about the mortal game worry about the immortal game um so to have the courage to do that and what you stand for and don't stand for and i always like to say this to people that are as we're finding ourselves especially young people it's harder to say oh who am i and what do i want to do it's easier to go well let's define who i'm not and what i don't want to do and eliminate those people places and things and habits that we have in our life that are not paying us back get rid of those and by sheer mathematics you'll have more things in front of us that do feed us.

And hey, we all got good wolves and bad wolves in us.

It's our choice to which wolf we want to feed.

I'm trying to do my best to feed the good wolf, knowing that the bad wolf's still hungry.

Okay, speaking of the wolves, the wolf of Wall Street, how fun was that role?

I've got to ask you.

This is an amazing role.

Mr.

Hannah, what can I bring for you on this glorious afternoon?

Well, Hector, here's the game plan.

You're going to bring us two absolute martinis.

You know how I like them, straight up.

And then precisely precisely seven and one-half minutes after that, you're going to bring us two more.

Then two more after that, every five minutes until one of us passes the fuck out.

Excellent strategy, sir.

I'm good with water for now, though.

Thank you.

It's his first day on Wall Street.

Give him time.

First time to work with Scorsese.

First time to work with Leonardo.

I'm getting called in for a day's work.

I'm a little nervous.

I get there.

Really?

But this character, oh, yeah.

I always, I still get nervous no matter what I'm doing.

I get nervous every single day at work, just the right amount.

I don't want to lose the butterflies yet.

And I go in, and one of the things I do, not only on that show, but on all shows, is before I'll do a scene,

I'll start banging my chest and find some sort of tune and I'll hum it out and everything.

And it's to relax myself.

I'll do it for interviews sometimes, relax myself, get out of my head, find the rhythm, and then come into the scene.

Well, I was doing that before the scene with Leonardo and Wolf of Wall Street.

But then, as soon as we go to action, I'd stop and we do the scene.

We do the scene four times.

Got it.

Funny, perfect.

Let's move on.

Marty says, Let's move on.

It was Leonardo's idea.

Leonardo raises his hand.

He goes, Hang on a second.

He goes, What's that thing you're doing before every take?

And I told him what I just told you, to relax and get my voice down.

Everything.

He goes, What if you did that in the scene?

I was like,

Great.

And the next take is the one you see in the movie.

Oh, no way.

Oh,

that's amazing.

Well, that's a great thing about you.

You truly do have range.

I mean, like, it's not every guy who can do both the how to lose a guy in 10 days, that scene in Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, and True Detective, right?

And speaking of True Detective, I got to ask, who is your best friend in Hollywood and why is it Woody Harrelson?

Woody has been a great friend of mine for a long time.

I mean, anybody who's like, he's like a great guy.

I get younger.

Anybody who spent time with Woody is one of the last wild men, a perpetual eight-year-old, has no context of time.

And I mean, he can frustrate the heck out of you.

But he may show up three days late.

He may show up barefoot three days late to your wedding, but you can't get mad at him because if you showed up a week late for his wedding, he don't care.

So,

so what do you always like to say?

Hey, even if you're going to the Oscars, it's probably best to bring your bathing suit.

I can't imagine like the cast of characters that has been in and out of your life.

I wondered, though, like thinking about, yes, who do you hang out with as friends?

Anybody in Hollywood?

Like, are you friends with the Hollywood people or no, you're friends with the Texas people?

Well, I'm friends.

I've got some, I've made some very good friends in Hollywood.

I mean, but also some friends that I'm still friends with people that i was friends with in college i've made i'm still friends with my buddy cole houser who's just in town um he and i met on days confused um he's having a great time now career-wise with his role as rip and and in young

people developing a project together um i still talked to rory cochran who i met on days confused and these are all friends of mine who are actors that i met in 1992.

i've also madewill hunting which is like yeah

crazy that that was him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Young Cole Kinney, this red with the short red fro.

So I made, I've made friends along the way and met some wonderful people in the, in, in Hollywood as well.

Okay, but here's, here's where I wanted to take it.

Is there anyone in Hollywood who you really admire, like whose values you admire?

I'm sure you admire, admire the work of many people, but like, is there somebody who's living in a way that you think, yeah, that's hashtag goals right there?

Well, I always looked up to the way Paul Newman led his life as a talented actor on screen, married to Joanne all that time,

the only marriage throughout.

The way he was able to be completely in the spotlight, but also live his own life.

I always admired that.

And like you, also then gave a bunch of time and money to charity.

Like, didn't just rest on his lawyers.

Gave over $100 million to charity.

Thanks to Paul Newman.

And made that, that was a part of

his life.

That was on his proverbial desk every Monday morning in his life.

He made that a part of his life.

And that was his choice.

You know, people always go, yeah, but you've succeeded.

You have the responsibility.

I think that's an easy place to go.

Don't go to responsibility.

If you've got the chance, you have the choice and the ability.

But choices

give us a lot more ownership than saying, oh, it's his responsibility.

I ought to do it.

But he did.

He did.

So I've looked up to his life.

You know, I learned something, though, though, from some people, and I won't say their names.

They were elder men in the business.

And this is when we first had, Camille and I first had children.

And I said to them, they had children.

And I said to them, hey, you know, you go on the road, you go to on-set for three months, five months, whatever.

Do you take your family and your kids with you?

And they said this version of this, look, it's either their friends.

or their dad.

And all of them that I talked to said they chose to let their kids stay stay back and have their lives in their schools and be with their friends and not come to work with that.

And all of them said, if I could do it again,

I'd have made them come with and choose to be with dad.

And so when Camilla and I had kids, before she pulled the goalie, she said, if we're going to do this,

one condition, you go,

we go.

And so it's been a real privilege for me as a father and a husband and the head of the family that anytime I go to work, the family comes with.

And that's been a major sacrifice for Camilla, but one that she would openly say,

it reaps more rewards than it does deficits.

And it is getting harder now.

And you're seeing this with your kids getting older.

It's getting harder because they're older.

They have social sort of circles and rhythms and teams.

They're apart.

And I don't know what I'm going to do the next time.

You know, this last one, I just did what I could to get it to shoot in my hometown of Austin because I didn't want to take them away.

You've got to cast more of the kids.

More of the kids need to go into the next movie.

Cast more of the kids and shoot more down the road.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

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I understand your quandary completely.

And it's like, the other thing is, as they get more into the teenage years, the friends do become more important.

And I was told by a very smart guy, do not, do not, Dr.

Leonard Sachs, do not bring kids' friends on family vacations.

The family vacations, the family outings are for you, for you five, not for you five plus their three friends.

If you bring the friend, your kid's going to be talking to the friend at dinner and at breakfast and at lunch.

And like, that's your time.

It's like to buy, but now as they get older and the friends we but i'm gonna i'm gonna hold to it and i usually hold to it too like that's the time for bonding

working on it we had this we had this last night look it was first day of nfl football sunday and um austin fc our local soccer team that part owner and was playing it was getting close to time go to bed and we wanted to eat dinner and it was like oh let's keep the game on and

we said no Let's turn that off.

And as soon as we turned it off, you can tell that it wasn't like anyone was missing out that much.

But all of a sudden, we had an hour and a half where it was just us, the five of us.

And we caught up on everyone on the last week.

And everyone started swapping stories about this week, and boys, and girls, and school.

And it wouldn't happen unless we turned that tube off.

Yep.

We had a blackout on Saturday here where we live.

It was like a weird storm that came through.

It was like a monsoon that just came and parked over our neighborhood.

And

it was great because, well, what happened was all the power went out.

And I said, oh my God, wait a minute.

We got a generator.

We're good.

And the generator kicked in.

I was like, this is amazing.

What a luxury.

And then the generator died.

That's its one job.

It's your one job.

Yeah.

But I mean, like, it's like being an actor.

Like, you're the understudy on a Broadway show and the star's out.

This is your big chance.

And you're like, I can't do it.

That's what happened to my generator.

Anyway, we sat, we wound up playing Trivial Pursuit.

with the kids.

It was so fun.

You know, it's like, you don't, you don't do that that often anymore.

It was like, such a good time.

You know what I hear?

Do you mean if you're this, I don't know what you do with your kids in social media.

And we don't, we've allowed Levi when he turned 15 to dabble on the Grahams and such, and the other kids not yet.

But

all their friends have it, the TikToks and Instagrams and everything.

But I've talked to them and their friends, and I've said,

So if you could choose

if socials were just not available to anyone

or it is as it is now, what would you choose?

Every kid, even the ones that have the TikTok, say, like, oh, if

I have to be on it, but if it wasn't available, oh, I'd take that.

Yep.

Very interesting.

They're all saying,

I mean, I feel like I have to be on it to stay socially current, but if it was an option for it not to be available, oh, please.

Well, look how you grew up.

Look, I mean, like, look how we were in the 70s and the 80s.

We didn't have any of that.

Like, you ran around, your parents didn't know where you were.

You spent your day with your friends.

You had to come home when the street light went on.

That was it.

You didn't have to worry about.

And bullying was like the old-fashioned style.

If it didn't happen while you were in school, it wasn't going to happen.

They couldn't get you at all hours of the day, you know, like on the little device that's in your pocket.

It's very complicated for these kids, but I do think they get more sophisticated earlier.

And they're going to need these skills at some point to navigate the future that's coming, you know, like AI and everything's online.

It's like we're a bunch of dinosaurs, our generation.

I know I'm trying to navigate not being a dinosaur, but still holding on to the traditional things that will never go out of style.

You're still thinking about like values.

You're writing about values.

I don't think those are going to go out of style.

You know, I hope they don't.

And I think we need to fight for them because I think they stand the test of time of any weather.

And then when I hear these AI sort of atheists say that, oh, AI doesn't need to be what's best for humanity.

It's just the next link in evolution.

And we'll create machines and a digital God that'll make us extinct.

And that'll be great.

I'm like, I'm not ready to go there yet either.

No, sir.

No, please.

Well, I mean, it's got to be scary as an actor.

You know, Justine Bateman has come on the show talking about how dangerous it is to the whole acting industry that these roles, I mean, and even your voice could be repeated exactly by AI.

You know, I could be like, and Matthew McConaughey is the new voice of the Megan Kelly show.

Here's Megan.

And you'd have nothing to do with it.

And it would be lawful.

Yep.

You know,

I've been one of the earlier ones to trademark and patent my voice and likeness

on a federal level.

And we'll see where that holds up if and when it needs to.

But

it is something that is scary because we're not that far from someone being in.

India tonight and saying, well, I want Megan Kelly and Matthew McConaughey here.

And I want Megan from 2014.

And I want Matthew from Days Confused.

And I want him to be here at the party.

And we're going to hologram him in right here.

And we're hosting it.

We're not that far away from that.

There's some wonderful things that you can do with it with speaking.

I'm doing it with the newsletter, speaking,

trading it in different languages where I, my voice, is sharing.

It's my voice reading in Spanish and Portuguese and French and German.

You know, that's very cool.

So there's wonderful things to be done with it.

But it is, we'll see.

Yeah, we're going to see if we can.

I don't think you and I will see directly.

I think we might have, we'll probably transition over to the other world with our dads.

You think we're on the other side of it?

I do.

I think so.

I think it's maybe our kids' problems.

So like we have to worry about it a little, but I think they're smart enough to handle it.

I want to get to this point.

What do you think?

Yeah, you guys.

What do you think if

you,

your children, forgetting

what they like.

right now, but if they were going to college, what degree do you think in a university do you think would prepare them for what's going to be most necessary in the job market later?

No, nothing.

There isn't one.

There's nothing.

I mean, really frankly, they don't need to go to college.

I want them to go to college to have fun.

It's an additional four years where you can mature a little and have a good time and home your social skills, which is important.

But in my view, it's not about learning or preparing for life, unless you're going to med school where you actually do have to learn a few things.

I just don't think that's what it's for.

So I just say get a classic, you know, liberal arts education.

Like all all the sciences that are exploded, like that, I feel like those are in serious danger thanks to AI.

Like math and science are being quickly taken over by the computers.

So

yeah, so I almost feel like the dreamers are becoming more and more important.

So don't do anything to kill your spirit.

Don't overwhelm yourself with like too much dogma from anybody in particular and keep your hope alive.

That's what you're going to need on the back end of those four years.

But I think you can learn whatever you want to learn in college on the the internet.

You can learn it from this conversation, from podcasts, whatever.

So I don't know.

I just don't think it's about that.

I think it's about like maintaining your integrity.

Learn how to be a good person.

Don't be just an SAT score.

Learn the skills that will make you an actual leader who can make good decisions in tough situations no matter what they are, as opposed to like this formula or that.

That's how I look at it.

You might be right.

I like your point of view on it.

And also, who the hell knows where it's going to go?

So, why waste too much time thinking about it?

All right.

Now, listen, listen, I got to read this one.

This is you on page 44 of Palms and Prayers, the latest book by Matthew McConney, which everybody should read.

It's actually make a great present in particular.

I think this would be a very nice gift for somebody around Christmastime.

You can buy it now.

You can buy a couple copies.

Here it is.

Covet nothing but your superior self.

Seek transformation over transaction.

individuality over conformity.

Recognize your inadequacies.

Then make one step at a time in the right direction and endure.

It will be harder than you think because your long road has no arrival until you die.

I love this so much.

Covet nothing but your superior self.

It's exactly, I mean, you could read nothing other than that line on page 44, and you would be a better person if you could just remind yourself of that every morning.

I always say this.

This is actually from Dr.

Phil, but it's a great saying.

The only only difference between you and someone you envy is you settled for less.

So, when you covet, when you feel envy, when you look at somebody's life and you say, Oh, I want it, or I begrudge them for having it, it's exactly the wrong focus.

It's a tell to you to focus back on what is it about me I'm unhappy with and how can I change it?

That's exactly what you're saying there.

Do you like,

I don't,

how do you teach that?

Can you teach that?

Well,

so

much of our consumerism and all those social feeds that our kids are inundated with are all about comparison

and not living up to and coveting something that someone else has because they're telling you it's the right way or more popular or what.

I don't know.

I think to teach that,

it's all marketing.

Everyone's marketing, all this stuff.

marketing's bullshit just can you read through and ask yourself what do I really want

what do I who am I not to have a foundation again I don't know if you can teach anyone out of it now but can you have someone deal

have you can you help children deal with the foundation of who they are so they're not getting schooled so they can use that tool and these tools to do the schooling play that's why you take the family with you right play Play your game in that business.

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't let that, that game become your business because then you're just going to get dizzy and it changes so quickly.

And you look back and all your friends you thought you had and everything you thought you could rely on is poof.

It was, it was fairy dust.

So if you can sit there and go, okay, because I don't want to say, don't ever go on social media.

Oh, don't go on AI.

No, go.

You need to check this out.

We got to educate ourselves here, but let's read through the BS here and see that the algorithm's selling something to make some of this, okay?

At your be at your expense.

Know that it's a game.

Just know that to tell my children, we try to tell our children that.

And so just to be aware that, no, that's not real.

That's that's commerce.

There's an algorithm selling that and putting in front of you what it what it thinks you want because of your traffic and your history of where you've already been.

Just understand that that's happening.

That's part of the game.

You want to play it?

Just be aware that that's the rules.

So you have a good handle on these problems and societal ills.

I can hear it.

And the you of July of 2024 considered doing something about it in the form of possibly running for Texas governor.

Didn't happen.

Your team did not want me to get into politics, but I just wanted to finish with who exactly did you vote for in the 2024 presidential election and why?

No, just kidding.

Just kidding.

But is politics potentially still part of your future, your story?

I don't know.

Could be.

It's something, look, look, I've, for the last six years, been studying different categories of where I could be most useful, where I could,

what leadership roles am I equipped for?

Look, it's inherently not my language.

I'm more of a poet, philosopher, and I'm dealing with values here, which I believe and belief, which I believe are true progress above the political.

sphere of left and right battling.

That's the space that I'm in now.

I am aware that the issues matter, that politics and legislation all matters.

So I have not canceled it out, but I've given it and will continue to give it some real consideration to measure myself.

That's

the right place where I can be the most useful.

But I'm not going to

bend my back to force myself in it.

I will get in deep enough where if I'm in it, I'll look up and I won't be able to help it.

I'll just be there.

I will be pulled in.

But, you know, it's a very conscientious headspace to ask yourself.

And I think it's something important if we all ask it, what if I was the leader of a state, of a nation, of a world?

It's a great question to ask ourselves because you call yourself on some of your bullshit.

You go, what decision would I make?

What are my own beliefs?

And where do they transfer to what I would believe for the masses?

Now, we all know in politics, they're not all doing what they believe,

but they're doing.

And I would not want want to go being anything where I would need to betray myself.

And there's a lot of betrayal that comes with inherently in politics.

And

I work hard enough to try and get a good night's sleep, trying to win the fair games

and fair fights, which are already hard to win.

And so for right now, I got my three kids, want to get them out of the house as healthy as possible and hopefully as much individuals as they are possible.

And then when that opens up after me being

on on-site father that I am and try to be, I will be open to considering what my next avenues are.

I love it.

I've said about President Trump, you know, he's under a lot of pressure when it comes to his foreign policy decisions in particular from different factions.

And I've said repeatedly on the air, on something like that,

whether you're going to add to a war and the weaponry of it, whether you're going to start a war,

whether you're going to push to end one, start one, he has to come to his own decision.

Like that,

that is playing with people's lives.

And he knows that whoever the president is, they deserve a wide berth in coming to their own decision about what to do.

Because it's easy for you or me or anybody else sitting in their armchair to say, this is how it should be.

We're not actually going to be responsible for ending lives like the president.

And those calls massively changed.

And those calls, correct if I'm wrong, those are the president's sole calls, 4 a.m.

by yourself in solitude calls.

Are they not?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's scary.

Like that's the highest order.

You better have your spiritual ducks in a row.

And what may help you is this book, Poems and Prayers by Matthew McConaughey, which will re-jigger your headspace around your life, what matters in it, and what your daily approach to it should be, as you say, playing this long game.

Starring in your own movie that starred for a couple of us about 55 years ago.

Not quite.

I'm not quite there.

Almost.

I'm right behind you.

It's been a pleasure.

I wish you all the best with this, with The Lost Bus, the movie with your son, and with all of it.

Thank you, Megan Kelly.

I sure enjoyed it.

Love, love, love talking to Matthew.

Let me know what you think.

Email me, Megan

E-G-Y-N at megankelly.com.

We're back tomorrow with the EJs.

Yes, Eliana is back.

We're very excited to see her, and we'll see all of you then, too.

Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.

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