Matthew McConaughey Drives The Lost Bus

It was 10 years ago that Matthew McConaughey starred in Christopher Nolan’s science fiction classic Interstellar, at the height of his career, known as the “McConaissance.” Riding high on his Oscar win for Dallas Buyer’s Club, the actor was doing alright, alright, alright for himself, at the hottest point in his career since hitting the Hollywood scene in 1996 with A Time to Kill. However after a string of questionable choices, the actor took a six-year absence from the screen. Now, McConaughey is back, and in the driver’s seat for The Lost Bus, and he’s not just hot again — he’s on fire. 

“One of the things I was reminded of when I came back and acted as Kevin in The Lost Bus was how much I love acting,” McConaughey says. “It’s very hard, very taxing, but to accomplish it, to build it, to be in construction of building a character, working with others to create it along the way — then to finish the project and look at it and go, ‘We made a good movie.’ That feels good.” The Lost Bus is a fact-based dramatization of the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, California. Oscar nominated director Paul Greengrass, of the Bourne series, United 93 and Captain Phillips, directs the film. McConaughey stars as Kevin McKay, a down-on-his-luck school bus driver whose fractured personal life is overshadowed by the life-or-death task of shepherding 22 children through a raging inferno. His real-life son, Levi, makes his acting debut as Kevin’s son Shaun, while McConaughey’s 92-year-old mother Kay McCabe McConaughey appears as his on-screen mother. America Ferrera (Barbie) co-stars as teacher Mary Ludwig, Kevin’s partner in survival.

”Mother Nature or natural disasters are — no matter how much planning or protocol mankind may have — it’s not an equal battle. We’ll be out-duelled,” McConaughey says.

Greengrass’s reputation for tightly wound realism was put to the test in fire sequences staged with a mix of digital work and real pyrotechnics. McConaughey recalls the precariousness of shooting: “There was a lot of gas pipes with a lot of fire, and while it’s a gas pipe, it’s still fire, it’s still hot and it still burns,” McConaughey says. “The coordination with the pyrotechnics, with the stunt people, with so many departments … it was ordered chaos. The chaos had order but it was still dangerous. If timing was off in one of the scenes, there could have been injuries. I’m happy to say, I didn’t get injured, no one got really injured … and I’ll go ahead and thank Greengrass for that. He doesn’t make the easy things hard and he doesn’t make the hard things hard.” The director’s unconventional style required that the actors stay on their toes. “He likes behavior,” McConaughey says. “The lines are important but what you say is not nearly as important as how you say it or what you do. Don’t come to a Greengrass film thinking, oh, I got a couple moves I want to do. No — you’re 28 minutes into a scene, you’re not looking for moves, you’re just reacting.”

McConaughey had a new experience on The Lost Bus in sharing the screen with his own family.  Levi pressed his father to let him audition for the role of Kevin’s son Shaun, ultimately landing the part without Greengrass initially knowing he was McConaughey’s son. “He was able to behave honestly in front of the camera. He was able to react honestly even if I improvised with him,” McConaughey said. “I sent that into the casting director with a note: ‘I think this might be good enough for a callback.’ She wrote back, ‘I think it’s good enough to send to the director.’ Paul Greengrass saw the read, he said, ‘That’s the kid.’ She said, ‘Well, that happens to be Matthew’s son as well.’ And if you know Paul Greengrass, he was very happy and he said, ‘Even better.’”

Greengrass later suggested casting McConaughey’s mother Kay, who delivers a warm but sharp performance as Kevin’s ailing mother, Sherry. “Next thing you know, I’m going to set with my mom and my son Levi and we’re in scenes together, which is something that I never really thought about happening in my life,” McConaughey says. “I’m honored to be a part of it, honored to be a bridge between those two generations.” The role of Kevin McKay offered McConaughey a chance to explore real life events from an intimate and personal perspective. “There’s a foundation I got from Kevin retelling how he felt that day with the sequence of events, which were very close to the ones we had in our movie,” McConaughey explains. “At the same time, there’s not a responsibility of, oh, you need to emulate this human being — the spirit of what they did, yes — but we had agreed early on that we were telling our own version, while still being true to the spirit of what happened.”

Fatherhood informed the performance as well. “I always thought that there are two paths as a parent: you’re the parent, and then maybe hopefully later on you become a friend,” McConaughey says. “What I’ve found now that my kids are teenagers is that there’s actually another character, a bridge between those two, and that’s being a big brother to them. Sometimes instead of teaching, I sit them down and go, ‘Me too, let me tell you a story about when I was your age and this happened to me.’ They go, ‘Oh really?’ And it takes the pressure off them, because as we all know, most of every problem we share, in some way, it’s universal.”

That philosophy carried into his six-year break from acting; a period when he published his bestselling memoir Greenlights, and explored other forms of creativity. “I wouldn’t look at it as time off — I was creating, making other art in a different way,” he said. “Having real life experiences, that’s where I’ve always gotten my inspiration from. And sometimes it takes time off to go through a certain chapter and say, ‘I’m going to live my life in a different way.’ Gives me a new perspective on the craft of acting too.”

Reflecting on the story of The Lost Bus and his own life career, McConaughey offers this summation: “If you want to find your way home, just don’t get consumed with how long that journey may be,” McConaughey says. “Just try and go, ‘what is the very next right thing I can do?’ And just take one step in that direction. And if you can do that once, and then once again, and once again, you find your way home.” As The Lost Bus makes its streaming premiere on Apple TV+ this weekend, home is the perfect place to be. —Patrick Gibbs

Read other film interviews from SLUG:
Lord of the Films: An Interview with Patrick Gibbs
Matthew Chuang’s Epic Journey Shooting Chief of War