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Matthew McConaughey on His Rift With Mom
Matthew McConaughey shared that at a time when his private life was “the talk of the town” and every time news articles were his daily reading, he unmasked the origin of those leaks as the most surprising place – his mother, Mary Kathlene “Kay” McCabe.
“We were in that situation for about eight years when I had to keep the discussions with her really short on our Sunday phone calls as she was revealing a lot of that information,” McConaughey told People in a joint Sept. 26 interview with his mom. “I would give her my personal information on a Sunday between mother and son, and on Tuesday, I would find it printed in the news or in the local paper. She just couldn’t stop herself.”
A Mother-Son “Hiatus”
Kay McCabe who is 93 years old, accepted that there was a disagreement between her and her son and referred to it as “a hiatus.” Matthew, 55, responded with a joke, “On Sunday, we had some dull talks. I wouldn’t tell you s–t.”
The separation escalated after Kay brought a camera crew into Matthew’s former home for a guided tour, confessing that she didn’t expect him to “discover.” “I took people through the house and said, ‘Well this is where Matthew slept,'” she reminisced. “One of the callers asked him, ‘Are you watching what your mama is doing?’ But I was so proud that I was just telling the world.”
From Rift to Reconnection
Matthew McConaughey confessed that he was very unhappy back then. “I was calling her, then she was picking the phone. I said, ‘Mom what did you do?’ She replied, ‘What?’ I was saying, ‘Don’t tell me, ‘What?” I even saw a TV program that she was taking the camera through the house where the show was happening. She says, ‘Oh that.'”
McConaughey shared that the two “closer now,” partly due to his change of view of the celebrity after Kay’s oversharing that had put a strain on their relationship for years.
“I became so sure of my position and fame that I felt like, ‘You know what? My mom may say whatever the hell she wants. Let’s take off the harness and just do it, Mom,’” said the Dallas Buyers Club star, who is the father of three with wife Camila Alves.
A New Chapter of Fun — and Wisdom
Matthew McConaughey and his mother Kay, who at one time had a somewhat distant relationship, are now a two-people team that uses humor and honesty to deepen their bond. “We go to red carpets and she said, ‘Any rules?’ I was like, ‘No rules at all. Tell all the raunchiest things you want.’ And she did and it was fine. It’s much more fun now,” Matthew shared.
Kay, in her own way, initially desired to be recognized beyond just having been an outspoken person. She said that teaching the kids not to lastingly put themselves in the same category with their thoughts was the main thing she could have imparted to them. “That’s probably the thing that I passed on the most to the kids – ‘you are what you think’,'” she explained. “If you think that you are dumb, then you are dumb. If you think that you are smart, then you are smart. If you think that you are handsome, then you are handsome.”
