Matthew McConaughey on Returning to Acting After a Six-Year Hiatus With ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ and Why His Season of ‘True Detective’ Is the Best

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor On the first day shooting “The Rivals of Amziah King,” Matthew McConaughey, his right eye swollen from a bee sting, walked onto the set, raised his hand and asked, “Is anybody else nervous except for me?” The cast and crew let out a collective laugh. “Alright, alright, alright, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one,” the actor said, sounding like a mixture of a preacher and a surfer with his signature drawl.

But McConaughey wasn’t joking. He admits he felt creaky returning to the screen after a six-year hiatus, during which he wrote a memoir, “Greenlights,” recorded a few voice roles in films like “Sing 2,” spent time with his family and kept a lower profile. “I needed to write my own story, direct my own story on the page,” McConaughey says of his time away from being in front of the camera.

But when he came across Andrew Patterson’s script, which focused on the charismatic owner of a honey operation in Oklahoma and his relationship with his foster child, he was drawn to its originality and strong sense of place.

The part fit like a worn-in pair of jeans. “It’s not where I grew up, but I know of these kind of people and these places and these kind of characters that live in the middle of the country,” McConaughey says. “This group of people in southeast Oklahoma where the film takes place know the Constitution, they know the rules they are living by, and they’re not looking for or getting approval from the rest of the world.