Matthew McConaughey Talks More About Shooting That Iconic One-Take ‘Interstellar’ Moment

Matthew McConaughey looked back on filming that pivotal crying scene in Interstellar, where a drastic time jump occurs to his space-traveler lead role in Christopher Nolan’s powerful sci-fi epic. 

In a career retrospective video with Vanity Fair, McConaughey reacted to his emotional reaction as Cooper, an astronaut who, after a nearly failed mission on a water planet experiencing extreme time dilation (an hour there is seven years on Earth), ends up losing 23 years of his young children’s lives in a matter of a few hours.

The actor talked about his prep for the heartbreaking moment: “It was the first scene up. I had gotten good rest that weekend, and I had had a pretty humble, good weekend. I was with my family,” McConaughey explained, touching on the fact that ultimately, the key scene was a one-and-done moment: the first take is what audiences eventually saw in the film.

“We got in, and Nolan was going to set up, they were about to play the tape. ‘Let’s rehearse the tape.’ I went, ‘Ah, ah.’ I remember, I think I had a note. I’d written, ‘See you first,’” McConaughey continued. “I handed it to Chris. All of a sudden, things came over, and cameras were there, and we played the tape. And again, this is that first take; that’s what we used.”

Of course, that moment would go on to be one of Interstellar‘s most memorable, not just for its dramatic connection in the film, but also for how it spun off into its own life as a viral internet reaction meme, used to convey everything from somber experiences to overblown fictional tragedy striking any given fandom.

“I didn’t have to go to a place. I did think about, and I did try to understand, what if one day you go to work, and [then] you were gone for 10 years. When Casey Affleck and Chastain come on [playing Cooper’s grown up children], the dread of having to miss that in my own life with my own kids, I just reacted.” McConaughey elaborated. “Which is what I’ve learned I like to do… there’s things like that. Because I’ve consistently tried to [be like], ‘Let’s just do the first take.’ Because everything after take one is acting, for real. We can improve stuff in take two, but everything after take one, if you’re fully relaxed and just reacting—everything after take one is acting. I didn’t want to know what was coming.

“I wanted to just… that’s all about relaxing, then. That’s just me relaxing, then what happens, happened.”

And what happened was one of the most iconic moments in McConaughey’s career—memery or otherwise.

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