Asked incredibly leading question, Matthew McConaughey gives wildly-taken-out-of-context answer

The media seized on his Trump comments

Matthew McConaughey will find himself trending when he wakes up today and probably have several thousand tweets admonishing him for being pro-Donald Trump, but is that actually what he said in this new interview?

Pretty much every single publication around the world couldn’t resist seizing upon the word “embrace” for its headline (including this one), but, stripped of delivery and context, they suggested a thoroughly different exchange than the one which took place.

First, there’s the way in which the BBC’s Andrew Marr phrases the question about Hollywood’s protests, which is a little ‘PLEASE PLEASE SAY SOMETHING OTHER THAN TRUMP IS TERRIBLE.’

Then here’s the response of McConaughey (who, full disclosure, we spoke to straight after Marr for a podcast, and who described the inauguration day on which the interviews took place as “weird”):

“Well, they don’t have a choice now. He’s our president. And it’s very dynamic and as divisive of an inauguration and time we’ve ever had. At the same time, it’s time for us to embrace and shake hands with this fact and be constructive with him over the next four years.”

Now, it’s of course very possible that McConaughey did vote Trump, which would be disappointing to a lot of us (albeit no reason not to still treat him with respect), but that’s fundamentally not what he said; his message was about trying to in some way move forward rather than just staying frustrated by the outcome of the election.

It doesn’t matter, though, as 2017 has no time for shades of grey. McConaughey will probably live to regret answering the question, and this type of response to the interview is why you will increasingly see actors, directors, musicians stop speaking their mind/voicing any kind of political opinion outside of the broadly-Twitter-accepted in interviews.