Are Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson brothers?

BarcelonbaMatthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have been best friends for nearly thirty years. They met in the late 90s, when they both coincided in the film EdTV, where they played a pair of brothers. After that film, they worked together twice more: in 2008 in Surfer, Dude and in 2014 in True Detective, a series that was a critical success. The two actors are nine years apart—Harrelson is the older one—and both were born in Texas. For years, however, there has been a question hanging over both actors' heads: could it be that, besides being best friends, they were also brothers? This mystery, based on a real suspicion, is at the origin of the couple's new television project, Brothers, which premieres this Wednesday on Apple TV.

In the comedy, the two actors play a fictionalized and parodic version of themselves. Harrelson, seeking to escape the intensity of his family, organizes a surprise visit to his friend's house, who is focused on trying to write a speech for the tribute to his father, who died some time ago. The arrival of his comrade disrupts all his plans. Amidst all this, McConaughey's mother lets it slip to Harrelson that she knew his father in the past and, from her words, it seems evident that the acquaintance was quite intimate. After doing some calculations, he ends up convinced that his father is also McConaughey's father and that, therefore, his friend is his half-brother.

In real life, it was during a vacation in Greece that the two actors discovered that they might be related. Both were spending a few days together with their respective families and the actors' children began to joke about how much they looked alike when they were young. "Then my mother, who was listening to them while holding her third glass of wine, turned to Wood and said to him: 'Oh, I knew your father...' Those ellipses were the starting point for it all," recalls McConaughey. Woody Harrelson's father, Charles Voyde Harrelson, was a hitman and was convicted of killing a federal judge. McConaughey's mother, who is now 94 years old, explained to them that she frequented the same places as Harrelson's father during the time when the protagonist of Dallas Buyers Club was conceived.

DNA test

The uncertainty about whether the actors are really brothers will surely never be resolved. While Harrelson is convinced that they are related and is willing to take a DNA test, McConaughey claims he has no interest in knowing the truth. Among the reasons for refusing to take the test is his affection for his father, James Donald Jim McConaughey, a football player and oil pipeline manufacturer in Texas.

To carry out the series, the two actors have partnered with Lee Eisenberg, a screenwriter who has worked on The Office and on innovative formats like Jury Duty, which also mixed reality and fiction. Initially, the two actors also wanted their families to participate in the series, but they eventually considered that it might be going too far. Thus, McConaughey and Harrelson appear accompanied by a group of actors who play their respective fictional families.

Beyond the anecdote about their possible fraternal bond, the comedy is a fiction about the friendship between two very different men –one is a Texas rancher, the other a kind of ungovernable hippy– but, at the same time, very connected. The scheme is a reflection of reality, as the actors themselves explained in an interview with the New York Times. "We have had our philosophical differences, but as much as we may have had a difference of opinion, it hasn't cost either of us anything. His world doesn't collapse if my idea turns out to be correct, and my world doesn't collapse if his is. We always end up hugging," remarks McConaughey.