McConaughey and Harrelson Turn a Family Rumor Into Apple TV’s Sitcom ‘Brothers’

The useful part

Did you know that to being great friends, the two might also be half-relatives? "Matthew's mother, I'd known her 25 years, and she told me, 'I knew your father.' You know, like, with the ellipses: 'I knew … your father'" Harrelson told Variety. Think of it as the meta-nature of Curb Your Enthusiasm, combined with the goofiness of a family sitcom like Schitt's Creek or Malcolm in the Middle, and, of course, the star power of True Detective.

How it works

• Now, just because they made the show doesn't mean that McConaughey believes the story.
• "Woody thinks he knows that we're brothers, and it's not that I don't want to know—I don't believe it," McConaughey told Variety at the show's premiere.
• That means there are still six more weeks—and six episodes of Matthew and Woody's brotherly (or not-so-brotherly) chaos—remaining in the show's first season.
• He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn't.
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What to take from it

"My mom's the one who started this whole damn thing, by saying 'I knew… your father… with the long pause after that. Even my five-year-old son understood the innuendo of what that meant." So, are the A-listers actually brothers? You figure they could just take a DNA test and figure out once and for all.

Example or evidence

• McConaughey then added that maybe that could change in the future—but he's a little frightened about what it could mean.
• If it's not true, he's not going to be near as fun to hang out with." There's a lot to figure out for these two.
• Below, we've got all the information to make sure you don't miss an episode of Apple TV's Brothers.
• The next episode of Brothers will officially come out on Wednesday, September 30.

Details worth keeping

We may earn a commission through links on our site. After meeting and becoming friends on the set of the 1999 comedy film EdTV, the actors began a long friendship, along the way collaborating again for the first season of True Detective, widely considered to be one of the great television shows of all time. "She tells me, and I'm thinking, 'What's behind this story?' And then I find out they weren't just friends—there was a little more to it." Brothers, in turn, stars McConaughey and Harrelson as fictional versions of themselves exploring this possibility.

Related coverage

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• Tvinsider: Taylor plays the mother of the fictionalized version of Matthew McConaughey.