Brothers TV show: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson might be related (but not really)

Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson and their families were on holidays together for the umpteenth time.

They were on a Greek island, it was past midnight and the adults had been imbibing. The 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup finals had been on TV. The vibe was loose.

Out of nowhere, McConaughey’s mum looks at Harrelson and says, “Oh, I knew your father, Woody”.

A pause. A long pause. The kind of pause so thick with implication that even McConaughey’s then six-year-old son caught the drift.

How plausible is it that McConaughey and Harrelson, great friends since they starred together in the 1999 comedy film EDtv, on which they played onscreen brothers, could actually be related in real-life?

Did Mary McConaughey really have a dalliance with Harrelson’s dad, a notorious contract killer who died in prison in 2007? McConaughey conceded the timeline is possible - at the time of his conception, his parents were divorced, the second of their three break-ups.

Harrelson claimed he believes it, with certainty just short of staking either of his two nuts, but McConaughey does not, nor is the Oscar winner willing to settle matters with a DNA test.

In reality, Charles Harrelson was arrested in November 1968 for the murder of a carpet salesman and he would remain behind bars through the two trials, his sentence and a separate federal firearms charge until 1978.

McConaughey was born in November 1969. So, you know, maths.

But the story makes for an amusing, almost titillating family legend, which is now the basis for a streaming comedy series called Brothers, which stars McConaughey and Harrelson as fictionalised, exaggerated versions of themselves.

The opening credits feature photos of the two throughout their childhood and youth, and there is an undeniable physical resemblance.

On screen, as they are in real life, the two are best buds and their families, played by actors, are embedded in each other’s lives. The Harrelson brood on their hippie bus is visiting Matthew on his ranch when that same morsel of information is revealed by MaMac (Taylor Holland), the McConaughey matriarch.

But Woody is the only one who hears, which kicks off a surreptitious attempt to obtain Matthew’s DNA. Meanwhile, Matthew is thinking of running for state governor.

McConaughey as political candidate is something that has been mooted in the real world, before and after he spoke out for gun control after a mass school shooting in Uvalde, his hometown.

It’s that blend of real and fictional that makes Brothers an interesting proposition, the constant questioning of what is and what isn’t.

Lee Eisenberg is one of the co-creators of the show along with McConaughey, Harrelson and David West Read.

Eisenberg said the genesis of the idea came from McConaughey and Harrelson and “potentially several tequilas and maybe some other things”, and he had received a call that the two wanted to meet with him.

He was on a plane to Austin and sat in McConaughey’s dining room within a couple of days, and knew immediately there was something to the idea.

“It’s a tricky thing when people are playing themselves, and what they’re willing to reveal, and particularly with this, their families and all of that,” Eisenberg told The Nightly. “From the beginning, I said to the guys, ‘We’re not making a documentary, so I don’t know that much about you and I don’t need to know everything about you’.

“We were creating something based off them and not everything needs to be a one-to-one in the way you would with a documentary, obviously. I think that allowed a little bit of taking off the shackles off in some ways.”

Still, Eisenberg said there was never a conversation in which either stars declared anything strictly off limits.

The goal was to riff and have some fun while Eisenberg confessed his personal ambition on set was to make it so funny that McConaughey would break character and laugh.

If you watched Primetime Emmys ceremony last week, you would’ve seen McConaughey and Harrelson’s relaxed chemistry – and their penchant for a gab.

Brothers may seem improvised because it has that same unconstrained, almost wandering energy, but it’s mostly not.

“They’d come in with a million ideas and we’d bat them around,” he explained. “Then I’d go back (to write) and we went back and forth and had a really good rhythm.”

The scripts were tightly locked when everyone arrived on set – “meaning, they have their intention” – and they would shoot a version as written, and after that, the process would be open for the actors to play and try different ideas.

Eisenberg has been writing TV for over two decades including on the likes of The Office US, Hello Ladies, SMILF, WeCrashed, Lessons in Chemistry and Jury Duty, as well as films Year One, Bad Teacher and Good Boys.

He’s not just responsible for memorable moments in American pop culture, but he’s also worked with legends such as Greg Daniels, Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen.

“All of these people that I’ve worked with or come up with in comedy, they all want to have option after option, and it’s disappointing if you’re in the edit suite and have five takes that are all just a version of the same thing,” he said.

“I’m not Stanley Kubrick. For me, the lighting isn’t the thing. I just want different jokes and different deliveries, or a moment that’s quiet and you see sadness on their face.

“The guys were incredibly adaptable to that, which is very different to (filming) a drama.”

There’s a long tradition in Hollywood of celebrities playing douchey versions of themselves, but Eisenberg said there’s an inherent likability to both McConaughey and Harrelson so he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

Not to lionise them or put them on pedestals, but he wanted the audience, by the end of the series, to go, “Oh man, I love these guys”.

Eisenberg gives off the sense that he loves those guys, and he reflected that in how he portrayed the onscreen Matthew and Woody, as two dads, two husbands and two friends who are always well-intentioned, even if sometimes their actions result in, oh, for example, a septic tank mishap.

Throughout Eisenberg’s career, his comedy writing has often been threaded through with positivity and sunniness. He admitted to naturally having an optimistic disposition so that’s where he gravitates. But it’s something he’s had to learn to be more comfortable with in his work.

“As I’ve gotten older and more confident as a writer, I respect the scenes that have emotionality and honesty, and aren’t just chasing the joke,” he said.

“For that earlier part of my career, everything was like, ‘God, we’ve gone four lines without a punchline, are we terrible comedy writers?’.

“The longer I got into The Office, and having those incredibly sweet, moving scenes between Jim and Pam or Michael and Holly, the comedy wasn’t leading the day, the emotionality and connection was.

“That’s something, in the past several things I’ve done, I’ve gravitated towards.”

He cited a scene in the later episode of Brothers in which Matthew and Woody are sitting on the bleachers at a school dance where they’re chaperons, and they’re reflecting on their past.

“That’s lovely to me. When you connect to the characters, that can sometimes elevate the comedy.”

Brothers is streaming on Apple TV