Matthew McConaughey's definitely not a stranger to romantic comedies. The genre has earned him millions of fans over the past 15 years and now McConaughey returns to the warm and fuzzy romantic comedy world in Warner Bros Pictures’ Fool’s Gold. McConaughey plays Ben ‘Finn’ Finnegan, a guy so obsessed with treasure hunting it costs him pretty much everything, including his marriage. Kate Hudson, McConaughey’s love interest in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, plays the woman who’s had enough and is ready to move on with her life - until Finn draws her back into the hunt.
McConaughey and Hudson didn’t want to get back together again onscreen just to do something similar to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Instead, they bided their time until something different came along they could both agree was worth reuniting for. Audiences showered box office love on 2003’s How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, but McConaughey and Hudson weren’t in a rush to cash on that success. It took five years before they found the right script and McConaughey hopes audiences will be happy with their choice. “I wanted to get together again,” said McConaughey. “I think there are definitely people out there that want to see…us get back together again. ‘I don’t know how they are going to do it, but want to see them together again,’ in the same way as we wanted to. It was just finding the right thing.”
Hudson joked that they drive each other crazy off the screen and McConaughey said Hudson can be a real pain in the ass, but the stars of Fool’s Gold share a special friendship that’s evident onscreen. “There's a real honesty and respect,” explained McConaughey. “But it’s really easy when you get on screen when it’s a scene about, ‘Give me a break.’ You don’t have to go mining for that!”
The cast and crew of Fool’s Gold spent a good deal of time in the water with McConaughey getting in over a hundred dives during the shoot. Although his co-star wasn’t proficient in diving prior to saying yes to the film, McConaughey already knew his way around scuba gear. But that knowledge didn’t make him any less cautious of the environment they were working in. “You don’t really fool around,” said McConaughey. “Behind the camera down there, it’s almost as large of a crew as you have on land. Because every single person, [Kate] has her girl who is a great diver who is behind the camera who has an extra tank in case the signal comes up. And I’ve got my guy and everyone has their person.”
Since McConaughey and Hudson last worked together, Hudson gave birth to her first child, Ryder. And now McConaughey’s on the verge of being a first-time dad. At the Los Angeles press junket for Fool’s Gold, Hudson said she thinks McConaughey will be a blast as a dad – and very responsible. For his part, McConaughey says he’s absolutely ready to take on the role of fatherhood. “My instincts will take over when the young one greets the world,” said McConaughey. “One thing I’ve heard that’s consistent, and I have a lot of great moms and dads around me from my own to elders to peers of mine, and one thing that is consistent that I’ve heard is all the grand plans you want to make, you might as well throw them out, buddy, because it ain't gonna happen like that.”
“The thing I’ve always dreamed about and look forward to this is…. We all have projects. You know, we go make movies, we have things, we have goals we achieve and we build something up. We are architects of things. Well, the greatest architect I can be, the one I have always looked forward to is the architect of raising a child of mine. And that’s going to be brand new, every day, and it’s never going to repeat itself. And to bring in a healthy child and to raise him the right way and then to a certain point, and then let him go, and then to still see him from afar? He’ll come back and [we’ll] come back together. And [to] see how they grow in to a young man or young woman - hopefully an old man or old woman - that’s the greatest miracle in the world.”
In addition to preparing for fatherhood, promoting Fool’s Gold, and getting ready to start work on The Grackle, McConaughey's keeping busy with his production company, j.k. livin. “First thing we did was over the past two years is we finally got a real Matthew McConaughey website, which I’m really proud of that because the only way you can share information is through your art,” said McConaughey. “So, getting online into that world is something I’m excited about. We got that going, which took two years to do. I’m real proud of that site. It’s real personal. It’s finally my officially one. Two, we just finished production on Surfer Dude which is a j.k. livin production. We’ve been in development on that for seven years. We finished shooting and are in post-production now. That’s the first really homegrown from the beginning through film that we’ve done.”
“The third thing is we just finished producing my first music album, Mishka. That's the guy from Austin. I did that down there in Austin and that album will be out sometime in February. He’s on tour right now with Xavier Rudd, who is doing the score for Surfer Dude. They are hitting Canada here in the next couple of days. So far, so good.”
