Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Matthew McConaughey (2021)

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

After its release last October, Matthew McConaughey’s extraordinarily raw and honest memoir Greenlights became something of a phenomenon while spending 50 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list. In this week’s Sunday Sitdown, Willie Geist gets together with the actor to talk about that book’s success, as well as his latest movie Sing 2 and his decision not to jump into the world of politics.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a great one for you this week and a repeat customer in Oscar winner, Matthew McConaughey. Matthew and I got together just over a year ago over Zoom to talk about his memoir, Green Lights. Since that time, it became a runaway bestseller. Something like a phenomenon. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 50 weeks, almost a full calendar year. Matthew and I talked about the.

book, but also about Sing 2, the new animated movie in which he stars as a koala bear named Buster Moon. He was in the original, of course, in 2016, playing the same character. It clocked more than $600 million at the box office, and he said it finally won him some new fans, his own three children. So we get into Sing 2, we get into the book, and we get into his decision not to run for governor of the state of Texas. Remember for the last few months, he'd been encouraged by a lot of people to run for governor of his home state and had been thinking about it pretty seriously. He tells us why ultimately he decided not to do it, but how he intends to stay involved and what he sees now as the future of the country. How do we stitch this thing back together? So a lot to talk

with. And he's always great, right? The wisdom of McConaughey. It's all in here. It's all right now. On the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Good to see again, man. Thanks for doing this. in person this time. In person, finally. No more Zoom screens. A little distance here, but we're still here, yeah. Let's talk first about Sing 2, man. That first movie struck something in the culture, did more than $600 million at box office and just a great movie on top of it all. So where do we pick up our characters? Where do we find Buster Moon here in the sequel? Well, we succeeded at the local theater in our city, but now we're going to go to the biggest we can find on earth.

Red Shore City, it's our version of Vegas. Can we go put on our show on the biggest stage in the world? And the stakes are higher, meaning it's harder, obviously, to get that show put on. The stakes are higher in that. If I don't put the show on, it's not just going to hurt my feelings. Buster Moon, my character may lose his life if he doesn't put this show on. So we take the show on the road there and try to pull off the impossible. maybe we do.

Check it out. That's a tease. There's a tease right there. So what do you think it is about this movie that struck such a nerve? I mean, there are animated movies that are popular, but this had some other layer to it. What do you think hit on it? Look, some animated films, I've got children. You've got children, right?

Sometimes they drag us to those. Or we go and we watch it. Okay. It's for them. It's not for us. Singh was something that was for the youth. It was for the. the parents of the youth, it's for grandparents as well.

And then with the soundtracks and the music in this thing, the kids are going to sing along to a lot of things. Well, I'm singing along to tunes that they don't know, and my mom's singing along to tunes that they don't know. You got you too coming out with tunes from Joshua Tree on this album, without you, still found what I'm looking for. I'm singing those aloud while I'm watching it. My kids are looking at me, and they go, how do you know that song?

Is that the new hit? And I go, that's about 35 years. That was written 35 years ago, buddy. But to them, it's a brand new hit. Yeah. So it's not one that the kids have to drag the parents to. It's unfiltered joy, which at this time, after the last two years and the time we're in right now, it's good news in the time of a lot of bad news. It's about having big dreams, but also the hustle and the rejection you've got to go through to make them happen.

Look, the last two years, dreaming has not been at the top of the list of things we've been doing. We've been trying to keep our head above water as people, as a society. This show says, hey, no, you keep dreaming, personally. Believe in it. Your own dream, the American dream, the song that's not sung yet. It's out there. Can you believe through all the doubt? And that's what happens in the first one, and happens even to large extent in this one.

and sing too. Yeah, the music thing is great because there's a little snippet of Abra, Abra, okay, that's me. Yeah, right? Here's some stuff. I hear my kids playing in their room or on the car on the radio. There really is something in there for everybody. When this first one came out in 2016, I mean, you get offered to do a lot of different

things. You haven't done a ton of animation. You've done some. What was it about this story that made it worth your time to go and do it? Well, one, I was kind of getting tired of me getting asked, and my kids getting asked, What's your favorite movie that your dad's done? And they go, we don't know, we haven't seen any. And I'm like, I haven't really made many they can see.

It's true, though. You know, what am I going to do? Sit them down in front of a true detective. Here, have a look at my work, kiddos. Dallas buyers. A lot more questions than answers, right? No, I've been not ready to that yet. So I wanted to do something that they could see, that I can share with them in the experience of,

that they could come in the studio with me, that they could go. over to Paris and see how Garth and the team are making the animation. They saw a little bit of the, on Kubo, on the, another animated film that I voiced. And then it was just good family, joy, fun. It promotes some great values, which I believe in. And it just, you come out of it, I come out of it feeling younger. When I was doing the voice over for Bustermann, I come out of those sessions, feeling younger, feeling like a kid again.

That's a good feeling. I think that's one of the things that's enjoyable about watching the film for everybody. And it's such a different experience, obviously, for you as an actor to walk into a booth in your street clothes and try to become this little optimistic koala. Yeah. So how do you prepare for something like that? So similar to what I do in live action, meaning who is he? Who's my man? In this case, who's my koala?

All right? Relentlessly optimistic. Okay. I've got some of that in me. I got to turn that up a notch, though. A hustler. Okay. I got some of that in me, in both senses of the word.

Underdog. Yep. I know that part of me. So how does that inform my voice? Well, it's not necessarily my diction now as I talk to you, which is a little more lilting and ends on a down note. The relentlessly optimistic one is always on the attack. We've got to keep moving forward. We're going to pull this off.

It's always on the upside. upside, come on. I have to get the show on the stage. I have to pull it off. And if you're relentlessly optimistic and you get rejected all the time, yet you're doubting, but we still believe, got to get back up, that all of a sudden starts to inform where that voice came from, or the attack on the voice. And once I found that music in the first one, then that pretty much is the basis for all the scenes. And yes, Buster has a lot of scenes where he's down and out, thinks maybe it's over. He's doubting himself and thinks,

what am I doing here? I don't deserve to be here. I've earned to be here. I'm going to go back home. But his friends lift him back up. They don't, that doesn't last that long. And he's back on track, trying to get the show on the stage. And it's not immediately clear, actually,

if you didn't know it was you that that's McConaughey, which is a compliment to you. It's a little bit of a variation. Yeah, it is a little bit of a variation. My kids know that I was Buster Moo, but still, in the first one and even the second one, when I'm watching it with them for the first. first time. Buster Moon comes on. They hear the voice come out. That sounds like Popeye,

and then I'm sitting to the left. They're looking at me and they look back to screen. They look at me, look at me, look back to screen. And all of a sudden they clicks. And I go, yeah, that's me. And they're like, yeah. And I have more street cred at the dinner table now because of doing this, because of Buster Moon. Now they can see it. Now they can see Dad's movie and they love it. I've talked to other actors who've done animated and you go into the booth and maybe with somebody else and maybe without. You might be alone in there. And it's not really until you say, you know, down and see what they've done after the fact that you fully appreciate how big a production it was and how it turned out.

So what do you think when you first, you go in the booth, you do your thing and then maybe a few months later you actually get to see it come to life on the screen. Two years later get to see it come to life. Look, I've seen the animated films where you can tell the actors did the voice work independently and they had to cut it together. It doesn't quite feel like people were there. This is one of the things Garth and the editors and the animators did so well in seeing one and sing too. We all recorded independently. I didn't see Scarlett, Reese, Bono, Tori,

till last night. I haven't seen them for two years. None of us worked together in the making in the recording, but you laid out our recordings, Garth cut it together. It looks and feels like we were all there. That's one of the things that most people are very surprised about. Wait, it sounds like y'all were in conversation live. No, we weren't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. didn't have any of their lines, they didn't have any of mine. And that's, I think, a testament to Garth, her director. Is that a hard thing to do, though? You're saying something to Reese Witherspoon, and you don't know how she's going to come back

at you with it? But that's what the director put together. Because it's not, I mean, I have that question when I'm in the booth. How are you going to fit this in? I don't know how Reese is going to do her lines. We have a lot of dialogue. I don't know how Nick Crowell's going to do his lines or Scarlett's going to do hers. I don't know how.

But I will say this. You come back and you record the second, third, and third. fourth time after they after the directors heard their recordings okay all right so he can direct me based a little bit more on it you know she's going to come at you like this because he's heard it and that helps and you start to form it it gets more specific and comes together through the two years of the making of it it's it's really good i think people are it's right in line with the original i think people are going to lap it up like you say there's truly for me i love a bunch of the music. My kids are going to love music. And as you say, my mother will too. It's an interactive

musical and it's on the screen. Yeah. And people that see it are standing up, singing along, dancing, and that's fine. If the person behind you want you to sit down, ask them to stand up. That's a testament to a movie if they're standing, singing in the aisles. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Matthew McConaughey right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Matthew McConaughey. Also, since I saw you last Matthew, we were talking about back then, about a year ago, Green Lights, your book. It had already had some success, but my God, what happened since I've seen you, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for a full calendar year.

Yeah. How do you explain that? Great book. Turns of deeply personal stories, but it felt like something else happened with that book. It hit a nerve, and that makes me very happy, you know, because it was the most personal thing I've ever put out, the most personal extension of me I've ever put out.

I didn't try to write it to appease. And, you know, did I feel like what I was sharing had a populace sort of, you know, nerve that it could hit? Yeah, about living, about approach, process. Human experience were all going through. I've had people come to me and say, look, it laid out a path for me, a different way of looking at my life where I've been and where I'm going. I've had people come to me and say, look, your stories, the way you told them made me believe in more in my stories that I've lived.

I've given more value to my past in the life that I'm living. Or I noticed I wasn't given enough value, and now I am. I'm going forward. I'm going to really put the pen to paper and I'm in my own life that I'm living. and I'm going to really start acting out the life I want to live. But that feels good to have hit that nerve for some people. Yeah, I will talk about it as much as anyone wants to talk about it. I put a lot of great hard work into it.

I loved doing the hard work of writing it. And I, yeah, I miss writing it a little bit. I miss. It took months, almost a year to write, and then about a year and a half or two to put together, because it's a very interactive read. Yep. You know, from down to the font,

down to, to have something that I put out that's between a hardcover that I know I approved and out of hand on every single notation, the font, period, pause, ellipsis, everything feels really good to put it out, and now to have the response to have feels really good. And you really put yourself out there. So it's got to be validating in some way to say, all right, I gave you everything. I talked about difficult stuff in my childhood,

and you took it and you liked it. Well, I think that was also part of why a lot of people were attracted to it. Whatever maybe comes with celebrity, people have a bit of a space between how much they feel like they can really know a celebrity, to some extent, we all do. And I think what I've heard from people is saying, look, you were so brutally honest about the successes,

the failures, the smart. and the tears, the confidence and the arrogance that put me in my place many times. I think they were just like they were able to feel like they were looking me in the eye, and I was looking them in the eye. And they were going, oh, I see you, because you see me. Yeah. Oh, you see me because you were seeing yourself. It was sharing a common, as singular and personal as it was,

I've heard that it was sharing a piece of the human experience. The approach is the rodeo of life we're all going through trying to get our eight seconds. Well, it's true. I think people think celebrities live on some other planet, and you invited people onto your plan and said, we live on the same planet, actually. Were there any pieces of your life, I can't imagine there were where you said, actually, I'm not going to put that in this book. Sure didn't feel like it. No, but I was aware. Like, look, a lot of my stories, my mom are in there.

Yeah. I knew I could go full bore, and she's some of the more hardcore stories. And I knew she could read it and go, you damn right. That was me. If anything, she came in and she might come in and she didn't go, you were a little light here. And I was like, I was light. You know, most people say she was the most hardcore character.

But I've got others, like my middle brother. He, I was honest about him, but there's certain things that I knew he might be uncomfortable with. And I was like, it's not necessary. I didn't tell tales out of school on anybody. And there were a few of the racier stories on people that I sent it to them first and said, look, I think this is a great story. I think it's beautiful because it's honest and it's human and it's who you are. But you let me know if you're uncomfortable with it because I'll write something else

or put another story in. And everyone approved the version and the stories that I wrote about them and said, amen, go for it. That's true. They laughed. They're like, I can't believe you're telling it, but that's true. Yes, put it in there because they saw the humanity in it, I believe. We were talking a minute ago about your approach, too, to getting the word out about this book, which is you'd basically go wherever they called you and go talk about your book.

And it was almost like you were running a campaign. Shake every hand, answer every phone call. and I think most celebrities wouldn't do that. You know, I think they'd say, I'm going to do a couple big hits here. I'm going to do Jimmy Fallon, the Today Show, and do that. But, man, you were in every bookstore online doing every Zoom. You sat with me for a long time and you're some faraway place. Was that a conscious effort to, hey, man, let's go tell everybody about this?

Well, it was a conscious effort. I wanted to do everything I could. It's the truest extension, truest piece of art I've ever put out. Besides my kids, it's the truest extension of me that I've ever ever. put out. Yeah. Look, I go make movies. Someone else direct. Someone else writes the, the script. Someone else edits. I wrote, started and edited this one. I directed it. It was mine. So I wanted to say, I want to give this every chance it can to get out there. But after a few weeks, it was out of my hands. It seemed to take off. And word of mouth and people were sharing it without me sharing it,

without me selling it, without me promoting, without my face attached to it. It was about, you know, the themes that were underneath that paper cover with my face on it, which was that green light symbol with three green lights. It was about that philosophy, that approach to life. And it took on a life of its own, the book did, and it spread, thankfully. Were you stunned in some ways that it stayed around as long as it did? Were you getting phone calls, you know, six months in saying, you're still on the list, you're still on list.

Could you believe the same time? It went on and on for weeks and for weeks and months. And yeah, like you said, a year. Yeah. I wouldn't say I was stunned. I was pleasantly surprised. And once it kept, once it kept staying at the top of the bestseller list and staying on the top 10, I was trying to listen and then go, what's, what's making a mark here?

Yeah. And I would, everybody I talked to would always ask that. So what was it that? it connected, what connected with you? Because I wanted to learn and be aware of what that was. And the reason it did was some of the reasons I said earlier. And so I just tried to listen to what specifically and who's reading it. And it crossed all demographics, but different demographics had different reasons they liked it. You know, and people had different chapters or parts of the book that they really connected to. And that, that made me happy as well that it was a,

It wasn't just one chapter that everyone goes, oh, that's our one. Everyone loves that. There was one greatest hit in the book. People had all different parts of the book that they connected with. You famously went out on your own, went through your diaries to get this book, and now there's this companion book about diaries and people's journey. You want people to kind of go do what you did, effectively. The Greenlight Journal that I'm putting out now, it's a companion with the book because

the book is based off of all my journals that I kept for 47 years. I've had, we all have ideas. We all get frustrated. That's when most people go to a journal or a diary, when we're frustrated, confused, or lost. Great reason to go. But as I write in Green Lights, it's make sure, in this, what this journal's for,

dissect your successes when things are going well, when you feel in the flow, when your relationships are healthy, when your relationship with your career is healthy, your relationship with your past and where you're going to healthy. Make sure you're putting the pen to paper then. Because what happens when we're seeking? succeeding when we're in the flow. When we're catching green lights, when we're crossing truth

and it's happening. We're dancing with the world and the reverb is coming back, just what we're giving out. We get in the shortest line at the supermarket every time and catch that green light. What happens? We go, oh, this is it. I got to figure it out. I'll never forget this because this is how it's supposed to be. It doesn't stay forever. We will get off track. We will get in a rut again, either by our own doing or life will do that to us. So when we write down and dissect our successes, I've done it. You can go back in your journal and go, what was I doing? And you'll notice habits, who you were hanging out with, what you're eating, what you were drinking, when you go to sleep, what you do first thing in the morning, you'll notice habits, and you'll go,

oh, I'm not, I quit doing that somewhere along the way. And you can go back, recalibrate, and it can really help you get back in the flow again. Also, like I said, You think, you have that great idea, you have a great interaction, or you hear somebody say something, you're like, oh, that's awesome. I'll remember that. Write it down. Write it down so you can forget it because it'll be written down and you can go back and find it. How many conversations do you have when you're with somebody or at a dinner and somebody says something and it turns you on? And if you don't write it down right then, the rest of that dinner, 15% of your brain is going, don't forget that thing.

So you're only 85% present. Well, stop a minute. Jot it down. And then you can be 100% present the rest of the time because you can forget it because you have written it down. So the value of writing things down and keeping a journal, even if it's just a list. And to take the sort of, there's nothing precious about it. You can scribble in the damn thing. Draw. Whatever you want to do, put a picture. You don't have to, people get intimidated with an open blank page. And I have to. I have. nudges along the way in this Greenlight's Journal that hopefully take the preciousness off that and say, hey, man, this is free. Who's the one person that we should get to know better than anybody else? Ourselves. Because we're the only person we're stuck with. We're the only person we can't get rid of.

So this is a way to start having a dialogue with yourself. And I've found that to be incredibly valuable in life. It's such good advice. I can't tell you many times. I've had a profound thought or somebody said something I want to hang on to this. I'm going to put it in my phone later. Yeah. Later. Yeah.

What was that thing? What was that thing? Gone. Yeah. I know it. I know it. Trust me, I've got millions of those as well, but thankfully I've written a lot of them down. Has the success of that book and the response to it changed the way you've thought about your place in the culture?

In other words, as something perhaps more than an actor, as someone who has some wisdom to impart or who can help people? It's given me confidence in that realm to say, hey, why did you really? what you wrote, tap into the human condition with a lot of people. Better listen to that, Matthew. Be a fool not to. At the same time, finding out what it's done for others, I'm learning more as well. I'm not going, ah, ta-da, I've got it. I've got it figured out.

Again, I'm not going, I've got it. The book was a major green light for me. but I'm spending time in the yellow light to go, well, why? Let's be introspective about this and understand why. To, I feel like I have some leadership qualities and thoughts to share that are not just good for me, but can be good for the most amount of people. Ways of, you know, I'm reminded and people remind me to remind them sometimes. And I have to remind myself about the value of sacrifice.

sacrifice, the value, the freedom that comes with responsibility. I think sometimes we forget it. I know I forget it sometimes. But that's when I talk about green lights, there's also, there's battery power green lights, there's the green lights that you can plug in the AC, but the real ones, the legendary ones, the legacy ones, the eternal ones are the solar power green lights. That's the ones we're really looking for. If we can realize that we're all in this game and one of the games, the big

game is the infinite game. It's more than mortal. That game, we can realize that we're in that game and understand and have the courage to understand, we're never going to get there. There's not a result. There is no ta-da moment in life where we go, I've made it to the highest peak. What do I do now? We peak crest. We get to the top of mountains. But what happens when we get there? You look on the other side and there's a million more. And I believe that part of the process of living, and I talk about it somewhat in the book is, if we can get to the end of our life and look back and go,

how many staircases did I ascend? Did my life have some ascension? Did I evolve? Did it gain in quality as it gained in quantity? That's as good as it gets. I think that's the best way. I think that's what life's about. That's as good as it can get.

Because the idea of going, oh, I can find true happiness, I'll get to the top of the peak, and there is a way to have a full result. I win, it's over. No. No. You keep chasing that. But can we be happy and satisfied with going, I know I'll never get it. I just want to keep chasing it.

Stick around for more of my conversation with Matthew McConaughey right after a quick break. Welcome back now the rest of my conversation with Matthew McConaughey. Talked about leadership that you can share with other people. you made the decision not to run for governor. So what does that look like to you if it's not politics? Yeah. What does that kind of next step of leadership look like? Have you thought about it?

Yeah, I've thought a lot about it. I do know this. I love telling stories. We need a new story to tell. We need a new narrative. And that's partially, it's not throwing away the old narrative, but America is a folk song. We need to get reacquainted with the original lyrics.

and we need to understand that we're still writing lyrics. The song's not over. Our song's never going to be written, as I was just talking about, we're not going to have a result. We're not going to have the song. America is about chasing yet. That's what the American dream is based on. We're not going to get there.

We're never going to have a full definition. Now, now we understand and all agree exactly what justice is. Now we're never going to have a, oh, now we all fully understand and agree forever what equality is. These are moving words and meanings that we're given meaning to and they're growing. And we don't throw out everything that we started with, with the Constitution and everything else. We look at that. We respect that, but we understand that we're still writing our song. And that is as good as America will get.

Can we look back? Can we evolve keep chasing yet? So there's a new story that needs to be told. There's a new narrative that we all need to be a part of collectively. now we collectively don't have even a national expectation of each other. Look at the mask. Look at the COVID. That's the one thing.

But before COVID, we still, we're losing that somewhat. Look at politics. It's about invalidation right now, not validation. We need a common currency, a frequency that we can go, okay, we're all tuned into that. We can all agree. I don't care who you voted for. I don't care what church you go to. I don't care if you're a believer or not.

come scientists, come believers, come on, there's a common frequency that that's the narrative we need to write right now that we can all go, I can tune into that and trust and believe in the values of that. And that's where I think my hunch is that it values is where we'll find that common denominator. They sort of override and supersede politics and where you go to church and what have you. You and I consider it no matter how much we disagree, you're a father, I'm a father, I guarantee you and I can agree on some values right now that we expect of each other. And if I had my kids with you, I want to expect you something of you.

And if you're a kid with me and you couldn't be here, you would expect it of me. And there should be a way that you and I don't have to go, have to talk about it, where I can look at you in the eye and go, got you. Yeah. That's one, you know. I think if you put truth serum and everybody, despite all our divisions and the screaming and yelling, we see public, I think everybody wants what you just described. We'd much rather be connected on some frequency than have this thing.

we have right now. Well, I think, and here's one of the reason I'm really hopeful, the sleeping giant is the majority. It's the pirates trying to get up starboard side of our ship, and the pirates trying to get up the port side of our ship. They have the mic right now, but they're the minority, and they're the ones trying to create the division. If the ship is democracy,

The pirates are, we just got to, the majority has to look around and go, hey, we got the numbers here. Get the hell off the boat. No, you're not welcome. We don't need that. But they have the mic. It's more entertaining. It makes, maybe it makes a little more dough. It's the car crash.

It's why we like to rubber net, you know? But we have the numbers. I think we have to wake up, take the mic from the pirates and sit and go, no, this is where we're going and how we're going to do it. Look, but fear sales better than hope. Just does. Yeah. It's more soap. It's more dramatic.

It's the soap opera. We just have to admit, okay, that's all right. But let's understand that we're drinking the Kool-Aid. Let's understand that we're lying to ourselves about that being really the way forward. No. Let's admit that. And get off, a little candy's fine, but let's get off the candy before our teeth rot. I couldn't agree with you more.

I think the extremes, those pirates, It's presented as representative of the two sides in the country, and it's just not true. No, it's not. Go talk to anybody who's trying to get through their day or go to school or go to work or get their kids to soccer. That's just not the way they live or the way they think. So how do you, as the storyteller, how do you get that message through? If it's not politics, how does it happen? Right.

It's a great question, and one that I'm thinking about. I will continue writing. I want to continue to perform. I want to be able to – I'd like to spread some of these things that I'm – I believe in that I think other people believe in, comedically as well. It'll be more digestible. No time that I know in my life, do we need to be told what to do more, but no time in my life that I remember do we not want to be told what to do.

No one likes to be told what to do, you know? So, and hey, I love to preach, but I got a lot to learn. But if I hear it in a comedic way, if I hear it in a way that goes, let's just admit, we're all kind of, we're kind of BSing ourselves here on this and this and this. Me included, when I say we, I'm including me, and if that can come across comedically in a way, I think it can be more digestible to more people. And again, if we can understand that we're told every day that quantity wins. We're told every day that success is fame and money.

I don't care how you got it. If you're famous, you got money or you've got money or you're just famous, you got the seat at the head of the table. I've got nothing against fame and money. I'm for quantity. But what's a real solar-powered green light? What's real success? Can you have the quality with the quantity? How you got the money?

How you got famous? How you treat people? How you treat yourself? How are you treating the future? How you treat in the earth? How you treat in the future for your kids? You're talking about, I'm a big fan of the word selfish. I'm trying to redefine this word selfish.

What's more selfish to invest in today that's going to set our children up to have more opportunity tomorrow? Or to take what we can today and say let them deal with it in a barren world tomorrow? I would say it's more selfish to set up a world today that's going to give them more opportunity tomorrow. That's the more selfish thing, truly selfish thing to do. So I would say we need to be more selfish in that sense. So at the end of the day, did you just decide the way for me to, affect change is outside of politics? I know you thought long and hard about running. It was, first it was, I don't believe politics is the embassy for me to best effect change.

It, where to be most useful to myself, to my family, and to the most amount of people. My kids are 13, 11, and 8. I'm in the salad days years of being the dad. I mean, they are, active in the adventures we take. If I did that, it would be a major sacrifice for myself. Then the sacrifice comes with anything you want to do that's ambitious. But I just looked and said, look, to me, politics is so broken right now. It's almost like, you know, to talk about certain legislations and issues in politics is almost like waxing the car when the engine needs oil. It's like, no, no, no, no, we're not talking about we need to go in and fix the engine. Politics needs the fixing as far as I can see right now. It needs to be

repurposed. We need to step up and say, what is the purpose of politics? I think one of the purposes is to provide paths, to create paths to go and get the American dream, not to give the American dream, but to provide paths for those who have an innate ability and are willing to work and get educated and hustle for it, to possibly get it. That pursuit of happiness. I think politics could be repurposed and understand that's part of what it needs to do, help create those paths. So I just felt like at this point in my life, it's not the right avenue for me.

With the responsibilities I already have in my life, as a father, husband, family man, storyteller. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to stay in my lane, maybe create another category, but politics is not the embassy that I want to get into right now. There's obviously any time in the world, any time and time of history you get into politics, you're going in in a two-party system with some form of handcuffs on. Okay, I understand that.

But right now, it seems like politicians are more handcuffed for longer than they have been that I know of. And I'm not really interested in going in and putting on a bunch of band-aids and coming out four years later and all those band-aids are ripped off. Or you're going to get in politics. You're going to get the mud slung at you. Got it. Get it. But if politics isn't repurposed, then you're kind of coming out after your term, still cleaning out the original mud that was thrown on you the first.

And you're finally being able to see four years later. We need to fix the politics and the purpose of politics first. You also have to compromise and sometimes be a little disingenuous, which I don't think you're capable of. I'm capable of it. I'm capable of it. Not compromise. I mean disingenuous. I think you're just, you're open.

I don't want to. No, I've earned some currency in 52 years. And part of that currency I've earned is about being genuine. Yeah. When I look in the damn mirror, or if I can look you in the eye, or my family in the eye, or a friend in the eye or is trying to, strangely in the eye, yeah, I've worked on that. I haven't been, I'm not making a pluses in it, but damn it, I'm working at it. And I don't want to throw that currency out the window to go, oh, with the constituency, you have to go play this part. We're talking about people's lives

and how much can you really get done. So, no, I don't really have interest. I don't want to do that. I know how to do it. I've done it. Not bad at it, but I don't sleep low with it. And I don't And I'm not looking to do something that helps me not sleep better. I want to be able to look in the eye if I succeeded or lost. If I got what I wanted done or didn't, I want to be able to look at them here and go, you looked at it in the eye and you tried your best at and you did all you could. It seems to me you're enjoying this new chapter in your life

where you're in a place you've done everything you want to do in acting. You'll keep acting, of course. But you're in a position now to do something maybe bigger than what you've done before. Maybe. If I could find a lane or a meaning and a ways and a means to improve and help, give my life more meaning, my family's life, and other people's life more meaning, which is where true freedom comes in when we got more meaning, then I'll try, I'm going to try and do that.

And I think that could be done one way is through storytelling. And again, people seeing their story individually in the collective story of state, of the nation, of humanity. You know, that's what we don't have, that collective consciousness, that we don't have that understanding, the truth, that we're all part of making the collective story. Yet we can still be in it. We've taken into the individualism of America. but we've kind of derailed it a little bit into a place of not understanding there's a collective responsibility to be us. Well, we can still have the freedom to be ourselves along the way. Well, we started talking about an animated movie, and I think we finished solving the country's problems.

And now we're talking about, let's talk about real super humans. You know, let's talk about real animated life, right? That's it. Yeah, that's it. Well, man, I can't wait to see what you do next with this platform. and hope you keep telling the stories and look forward to seeing you down the road, man. Thanks for doing this. Good talking to you again, Willie.

My big thanks again to Matthew for a great conversation. His new movie Sing 2 hits theaters on December 22nd, and you can check out the new companion book to Green Lights wherever you get your books. My thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of my conversations with guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today, weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.