Matthew McConaughey is known for his diverse acting work. But when it comes to performing emotional scenes, he says he prefers the first take.
The Academy-winning star points to a scene in Interstellarheavy with emotion, which unfolds as he travels through space watching videos of his children growing older, bringing tears to his eyes.
The impactful scene, McConaughey recalls, was shot in one take.
“Those emotional scenes like this, I like to do them first and then the close-up, so I remember sitting down and [Christopher Nolan] said, ‘Okay, so let’s rehearse and then we’ll shoot the video.'”
The renowned actor adds that after one take, the emotional authenticity turned into acting, which he often avoids in scenes like this.
“Why? Because after take one, everything is acting, but take one, I don’t know what I’m going to see, so as long as I can be relaxed enough and I know the scenes where I’m going to see my kids who have obviously aged and I haven’t.”
To make the scene believable, McConaughey recalls imagining the fictional story as reality in his mind: the pain of losing the time to watch his children grow up.
“The idea that how much, if I personalize that, oh my god. If I was dead, what if I didn’t see it [his three real-life children] Vida and Levi and Livingston for so much, oh, that’s a sick feeling,” he says, referring to his children.
Given the raw emotions unfolding in front of the camera, he is rightfully surprised to learn that the scene has become a pop culture meme.
At first he tells John Mayer, on whose show SiriusXM’s How is life he recently shared that he didn’t know the emotional scene became “a huge visual milestone,” noting that the film has “seen a resurgence in popularity over the years.”
Interstellar is streaming on Netflix.
