Matthew McConaughey compared meeting Pope Leo XIV to preparing an Oscars acceptance speech, jokingly telling “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon: “We went off script.”
The Oscar winner stopped by “The Tonight Show” on Wednesday night to discuss his new film, “The Rivals of Amziah King.” Early in their conversation, though, McConaughey opened up about his experience meeting the Pope and revealed why preparing to speak with the religious figure felt a little bit like preparing to win an Academy Award.
“I had some things I wanted to talk to him about. But if you prepare things to talk to the Pope about, it’s kind of like preparing a speech before the Oscars,” he said. “You don’t know if you’re going to win, so if you win and you pull out a speech, it’s kind of arrogant, right? To go like, ‘Well, I had a speech written.’ So you show up to meet the Pope and you have some things to say and we went off script anyway.”
“I got to talk to him about some nice things, man,” McConaughey continued. “He made me laugh, which is one of the things that I think is consistent about the holiest and most spiritual people I’ve ever met in the world. They all got a great sense of humor.”
“In the words of my buddy [‘Dazed and Confused’ filmmaker] Richard Linklater: ‘You make humor the default emotion, we’re all going to be getting along a lot better,’” he added.
Later on, Fallon and McConaughey discussed a scene in “The Rivals of Amziah King” in which the actor holds an entire hive’s worth of live bees on his arm. The scene was filmed practically with real bees, and while McConaughey said he managed to make it through the scene without getting stung, he was not so lucky during rehearsals.
As a matter of fact, after Fallon showed a photo of McConaughey with one of his eyes swollen shut, the actor revealed how he found out the hard way that he is actually allergic to bee stings.
“This is a week before we started shooting, and I did get stung,” McConaughey recalled of the photo in question. “The beekeeper goes, ‘Are you allergic?’ I go, ‘No, absolutely not.’ He goes, ‘We’ll wait 20 minutes and see if you swell.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ 20 minutes go by, I didn’t swell. He goes, ‘You’re not allergic!’ Everyone left. I had a 45-minute drive back home. About 30 minutes of the way home, I start to notice my peripheral vision on the right side, it’s going out.”
“I was very allergic,” McConaughey said. “In good movie-making, when you have a scene like this and someone like Mr. McConaughey, who’s allergic to bee bites, you schedule this for the last shot of the movie!”
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