Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are set to star in a TV show called Brothers. They’ve long joked they could be related. But could there be some truth to it?
17:35, 03 Dec 2025
Texans Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey have a close bond(Image: Getty Images)
For years, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have joked they could be blood relatives.
And now, to add fuel to the fun, they’re both about to star in a TV comedy series called Brothers, a fictionalised version of their lives in which they decide to move in together, with their families, at McConnaughey’s ranch in Texas.
But there might actually be some truth to the yarn.
The two Hollywood A-listers were already firm friends when they starred in the first season of the hit anthology series True Detective back in 2014, but the series made their close bond even stronger.Both actors hail from Texas and have even shared family vacations. And they’ve joked they might be related by blood. “My Kids call him Uncle Woody,” McConaughey said on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast. “His kids call me Uncle Matthew. My family thinks a lot of pictures of him are me. His family thinks a lot of pictures of me are him.”
McConaughey’s mother Kay then dropped something of a grenade in the form of a cryptic hint during a vacation.
Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart and Matthew McConaughey as Rustin Cohle in True Detective
In 2023, McConaughey told Access Daily: “We’re all sitting around in Greece one night talking and my mom out of nowhere in a little pause goes, ‘Oh, I knew your dad, Woody…’ And we all went, ‘What was the ellipsis about? And what was the knew about?’ And she goes, ‘Just saying, we might have frequented the same similar place out in West Texas one time when he was on furlough.’ And we all went, ‘What? What, are you going to leave it there?’ Now we gotta go do some DNA tests.”
Harrelson and McConaughey then established it was possible McConaughey’s mother, who was going through a divorce at the time, could have slept with Harrelson’s father, although the evidence is circumstantial at best.
Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey have even been on holiday together(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Harrelson’s dad, Charles Voyde Harrelson, was a contract killer who worked for the mob. He was twice convicted of murder, including the 1979 assassination of federal judge John H. Wood Jr.
He also claimed to have killed US President John F Kennedy.
Speaking to Stephen Colbert on Late Night, Harrelson said McConaughey finding out the pair were brothers would be a “much more big deal.”
He added: “I mean, he feels like he is losing a father. But I’m like, no, you’re gaining a different father and a brother.”
Filming for Brothers, ordered by Apple TV, started in November 2024, but production was suspended in June 2025 after disagreements over the direction of the series, which led to show creator David West Read leaving the project.
As of August 2025, it has been taken over by Paramount Television Studios. McConaughey and Harrelson have yet to confirm whether or not they have done or plan to do a DNA test.
