Matthew McConaughey talked about the inspiration behind his first children’s book “Just Because” which he said came to him in the middle of the night like a song and “speaks to the kid in all of us.”
The 53-year-old actor said the idea of his debut kids picture book came to him like a “ditty in a dream. It was a song in my mind, and I got up and wrote it down,” People magazine reported.
McConaughey said it contains a collection of struggles and various life lessons we all face, not just kids, and that it’s already sparked “a lot of good conversations” with his kids Levi, 15, Vida, 13, and Livingston, 10, wife Camila Alves, and even his 91-year-old mom Kay.
for the kid in all of us #JustBecauseBook #audiobook pic.twitter.com/3bIDyPwvxo
— Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) September 5, 2023
“My mom’s 91 and she said, ‘That’s not just for kids. You even reminded me of some things in there,'” the superstar actor said.
“Just being a dad, I mean, you’re thinking about your kids all the time [and] I think that afternoon, I’d been having conversations with my children about certain new things that they were crossing for the first time or, ‘Well, this happened and I’m not sure how to feel about it. And I wanted to do this, but I felt I needed to do this, and I was confused,'” he added.
“Evidently it was in my subconscious … Once I knocked all the couplets down in the rhythm, it sort of wrote itself,” McConaughey continued.
The “Dallas Buyers Club” star said his kids have already given their seal of approval.
“They liked it,” McConaughey said. “Vida is very visual, so she loved the pictures that [illustrator] Renée [Kurilla] did. I ran it by my kids. We went through scenarios [explored] in it.”
The Hollywood star said one of the parts that they connected to was a section that read, “Just because you’re wailing, doesn’t mean you’re a crier. Just because you lied, doesn’t mean you’re a liar.”
“We talked about that one quite a bit because my kids have seen it,” he added. “We do it all the time: We label somebody. Somebody fibs to you: ‘Oh, you’re a liar.’ Well, that’s a big blanket to put on somebody. If you call someone a liar, they get defensive: ‘Whoa, my whole being? You mean I’m all about untruths?'”
“But if you say, ‘No, that was a lie,’ that person has the choice now to go, ‘I know, I’m sorry about that,'” McConaughey continued.
His book follows the “Interstellar” star’s first dive into publishing when he released his bestselling book “Greenlights” in 2020, which deals with trials and tribulations he’s faced in his own life.
“Just Because” is due out September 12.