True Detective: why Woody Harrelson wanted to hit Matthew McConaughey

“I really wanted to punch him in the face!”

Jeremy Strong’s method acting drove Brian Cox crazy on Succession… The “Method” had the same effect a few years earlier on Woody Harrelson!

Guest of the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, the actor said he felt like hitting Matthew McConaughey “so many times during the filming of the first season of True Detective, because of his total immersion in his role.

“He’s in method mode,” Harrelson says. “When we were filming, he was Rust Cohle. I wanted to punch him in the face so badly. I was furious because he was completely in character.”

For his part, McConaughey specifies that he had to remain “stoic” between takes so as not to escape Rust’s dark state of mind.

“We were sitting there, about to shoot, rehearsing. I’m staying stoic as Rust Cohle. And Woody says, ‘Hey man, we need to talk about something. You and I, we’re passing the buck. We’re playing, we’re volleyball. It’s dramatic, but it’s also comedy.'”

In the series, the two actors play a duo of southern investigators tracking a serial killer in the most remote corners of Louisiana. Harrelson admits that he sometimes found the tone too dark and suggested that McConaughey add a few jokes.

“I remember telling him before filming: ‘People are going to want to laugh a little with us, we have to make jokes.’ And him, just a ‘Mhm’. I was waiting for a real ‘No, no way.’ But no, just ‘Mhm, yeah’.”

True Detective season 1 won 5 Emmy Awards and remains one of the crime series that redefined the genre.