12 Years After ‘True Detective,’ Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson Reunite for a Very Different Mystery

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have always been synonymous with each other. Now, the Apple TV series Brothers has made it so we’re all asking the important question: Are Harrelson and McConaughey actually related to each other? The series presents itself as a fictionalized version of their friendship, in which it turns out they’re surprisingly related, despite working and knowing each other for years. In a new exclusive clip, we get to see how that dynamic plays out when Harrelson helps McConaughey on his campaign trail to become the new governor of the state of Texas, where both are from.

Prior to their Apple TV series, Harrelson and McConaughey have worked together a few times, including the film Surfer, Dude from 2008 as well as the first season of the anthology series True Detective. Brothers marks the first time that the two are starring in a project together while playing themselves. The series is described as follows: “Matthew and Woody have been best friends for years, but a shocking family secret suggests their connection might be closer.”

In the clip, Harrelson is on stage at a rally, announcing McConaughey to a crowd of people. The two embrace on stage and then Harrelson points out that he probably can still beat up McConaughey who he deems as a scrawny man. It is light-hearted and sweet and does feel like two brothers making fun of each other. And it is nice to have a storyline in a show like Brothers that is poking at McConaughey’s own relationship with politics and his constant teasing of eventually going to embark on his own political career. The real McConaughey has said he isn’t ready yet but fictional McConaughey clearly is.

Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.

You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
you.

• You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within
  about five minutes and has never stopped.
• This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every
  single person in your life would be.
• The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you
  do with things you love.
• The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the
  arguments are about to start all over again.

You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.

• You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something
  enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
• This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly
  alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
• Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all,
  which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
• Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make
  that argument.

You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.

• You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a
  grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
• Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly
  1980 with no sign of resolution.
• The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score
  and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
• You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good
  time.

You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.

• You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major
  franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
• The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that
  makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
• Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is
  appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
• You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you
  will always find somebody willing to have it.

‘Brothers’ Uses Real Life to Create a Fun Fictional Series

McConaughey and Harrelson have both publicly made the joke that McConaughey’s mother had, previously, said something about knowing Harrelson’s father. It then became a running joke between the two that it meant that McConaughey’s father was actually Harrelson’s father. With Harrelson believing the two to be half-brothers, McConaughey didn’t really play into it until the series. Now, with the show adding McConaughey’s teases about getting into politics, Brothers allows fans to engage with lore that they know exists around McConaughey and Harrelson but in a fun, hilarious new series! And who knows what the future holds for Governor McConaughey!

You can watch Brothers, airing weekly on Apple TV.

Brothers

Brothers follows Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as they play friends whose families are suddenly brought under one roof at McConaughey’s Texas ranch.