Matthew McConaughey confirmed his family isn’t easy to “get into” ― and it’s something his wife, Camila Alves, knows all too well.
Alves recently opened up about the terrible way she was treated by her now-mother-in-law, whom the family calls “Ma Mac.”
“She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriend’s names, she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting me down a bit. I mean, all kinds of stuff,” Alves, who was born in Brazil, said on Southern Living’s “Biscuits & Jam” podcast back in August. She added that she now has “the most amazing relationship” with McConaughey’s mother.
The “Dallas Buyers Club” star confirmed his wife’s story in an article published on Thursday, telling ET Canada that his family “is big on rites of passage and initiation, and you don’t get into the McConaughey family easily.”
“We test you,” he said. “Oh, my family. We humbly wait, we make you cry ‘uncle’ and then we pick you up and make your favorite drink and go ‘Welcome back.’ So there are initiations, rites of passage that my family’s always enjoyed.”
“And when did Camila break through with [my mom?] When Camila goes, ‘I’m not asking your permission anymore,’” the actor explained. “And basically, my mom was like, ‘There we go. That’s right.’”
McConaughey’s own relationship with his mom previously reached a difficult point and the two were estranged for nearly 10 years.
The actor revealed during a 2020 appearance on “The Howard Stern Show” that his mom became “a fan of my fame” at one point during their relationship and started leaking personal details to the press.
“I would have conversations, and then all of a sudden — whoop — what we’d talked about would end up in the paper three days later,” he said. “I was, like, ‘Mom, that was between us!’”
Though the two had a “strenuous relationship for eight years,” McConaughey said the two are “completely back now” ― with some boundaries, of course.
“We went through it, and we’re on the other side of it,” the “Greenlights” author told Stern. “It’s good.”