Matthew McConaughey Reveals the Parenting Advice That Changed His Relationship With His Teens

The new drama directed by Paul Greengrass , the man behind much of the Jason Bourne saga, is now available on Apple TV. A blend of disaster film and humanist chronicle, ‘ Labyrinth in Flames,’ starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera , recreates the real-life horror of the Camp Fire, which in 2018 ravaged Northern California, leaving 85 dead and reducing the town of Paradise to ashes.

Based on journalist Lizzie Johnson’s non-fiction book, ‘Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire’, the film delves into one of the most devastating days in recent American history: 150,000 acres consumed, more than 18,000 structures destroyed, and a community fighting for its survival. At the heart of the chaos, a school bus driver and a teacher manage to save 22 children from the flames , traversing a highway transformed into a corridor of the Apocalypse itself.

Greengrass, who had already explored everyday heroism in ‘United 93’ and ‘Captain Phillips’, films the disaster here with an almost documentary-like physical tension, yet still leaves room for emotion. McConaughey, in his most powerful performance since ‘Dallas Buyers Club’, is guided by a line that encapsulates his character’s wound: ”
Paul wrote a line for the protagonist that said it all: ‘I was late as a son, and now I’m late as a father.'” A fictional confession that, according to him, connects with his own real-life story.

“I’m going to talk about my children,” the actor remarked at a recent press conference about the film. ”
As a father, I always thought there were two stages: first you’re the father, and then, hopefully, you become the friend. But now that my children are teenagers, I’ve realized there’s actually an intermediate role, a bridge between those two, and that’s being their older brother. So, while I’m still acting as a father, I often find myself listening to something that’s bothering them, and instead of lecturing them, I sit down with them, put my hand on their back, and say, ‘It happened to me too. Let me tell you a story from when I was your age and something similar happened to me.’ And they reply, ‘Really?’ That helps them understand that the world doesn’t revolve around them, that they’re not the only ones with that problem.”

McConaughey’s impromptu masterclass on empathizing with your children to address their problems also brought to mind an anecdote from his own childhood: “I was in sixth grade, and
there were four eighth-grade boys who used to bully me. They did it on every bus ride home. One day I got off the bus with a small bruise on my eye, and my brother asked me, ‘What’s that? How did you get that?'” I told him, “Nothing, it’s nothing.” But he insisted, “How did you get it?” I replied, “Well, it was a kid named Scott and his friends on the bus.” And he said, “Oh, yeah?” He didn’t say anything else. The next day, on the way home, there they were again, behind me, bothering me.
Suddenly, I saw the driver start to pull the bus onto the shoulder of the highway. I looked to my left, and it was my brother yelling at me, “Roll down your window and tell the driver to stop!” The bus stopped, my brother got out of his car, got on the bus, and the driver told him, ‘You can’t get on.’ He replied, ‘Obviously, you can’t control the kids on your bus, so I will.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘Which ones are bothering Matthew?’ I turned around, and there were the four of them.
I’m not going to repeat exactly what he said to them, but he got off the bus… and those boys never bothered me again.