Tag: camila alves

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Matthew McConaughey is still talking about his mom’s behavior towards his wife Camila Alves when they first started dating. This whole press cycle began when Camila did a podcast interview and shared how Kay McCabe aka Ma Mac, “tested” her when she first started dating Matthew. For example, McCabe would call Camila by Matthew’s ex-girlfriends names and speak to her in broken Spanish, even though her native language is Portuguese. A lot of people did not find this treatment funny and rightfully called it out as abusive. MM tried to do damage control by laughing Ma Mac’s behavior off as a rite of passage in the McConaughey family. Yeah, no one was buying that one either. Now, Matthew is once again defending Kay, framing it as “looking out” for him.

“My family — and part of Camila and I as well — we cherish the value of a sense of humor and comedy,” the Oscar winner said on the “Whine Down with Jana Kramer” podcast Monday while admitting that his mother Mary McCabe’s treatment of Alves when they met had ruffled some feathers.

“Some people were like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ but … Camila wasn’t wounded about it,” he insisted. “What tickles us may bruise others.”

McConaughey, 53, went on to praise his mom for “looking out for” him when he began his relationship with the now-41-year-old model.

“She was looking out for me,” he said. “She tested my feelings and tested the woman I had the feelings for. Big picture, that’s pretty cool actually.”

The “Interstellar” star also gave Alves a shout-out for going “right through” the hazing and earning McCabe’s respect.

[From Page Six]

Meh. I have never heard the phrase, “What tickles us may bruise others.” Is that a Texas thing? Maybe Matthew’s next book should be a compilation of random sayings, lol. But in all seriousness, MM had a messed up childhood. He also had a rocky relationship with Kay when he first became famous and stopped talking to her for eight years to set some boundaries. He likely still craves affection from his mother and probably has a very skewed way of looking for it. I believe him when he says that he thinks it was “cool” that his mom was looking out for him. Bless his heart. I just wish he’d understand that good intentions do not justify bad actions. Ma Mac’s actions towards his wife were still abusive.

When this story first broke, a lot of you shared some really great personal stories about getting along with your in-laws. At the end of the day, it’s up to Camila to decide what she wants to put up with, but Matthew needs to stop normalizing and justifying his mother’s behavior. Every time he does another interview explaining it away, it just brings more attention to it. Matthew, we’re in Hollywood Divorce Szn. Stop talking about your mom and everyone will forget about it soon enough.

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Last month, Camila Alves did a podcast interview in which she shared a story about how her husband Matthew McConaughey’s mom, Kay McCabe aka Ma Mac, “tested” her when she first started dating MM. These tests included things like calling her by Matthew’s ex-girlfriends names and speaking to her in broken Spanish, even though her native language is Portuguese. A lot of people did not find Ma Mac’s strategy to be funny at all and called it out as abusive. I don’t know if this is damage control or not, but during an interview with ET Canada, MM confirmed Ma Mac’s bad behavior but tried to justify it as a “rite of passage” within his family. Umm…

While speaking to ET Canada’s Cheryl Hickey in a new interview, McConaughey admitted it’s true, explaining: “My family is big on rites of passage and initiation, and you don’t get into the McConaughey family easily.”

“We test you. And even in our own family with my brothers and mother is one of us. Me and my brothers get on our high horse about something,” he continued. “Oh, my family, we humbly wait, we make you cry, and then we pick you up and make your favourite drink, ‘You’re welcome back.’ So there are initiations, rites of passage that my family’s always enjoyed.”

The “Interstellar” star, 53, then explained how his wife eventually broke through with “Ma Mac.”

“Camila goes, ‘I’m not asking your permission anymore.’ And basically, my mom was like, ‘There we go. That’s right,’” he recalled their conversation.

Turning the table, McConaughey is unsure whether he and Alves will use the same “testing” strategy with their own kids.

“We’ll see. We’re just coming on the beginning of this stuff. You know what I mean? Talk to me in about three years, and I’ll have a better answer for,” he said of his kids’ future dating lives. “…Navigating is not going to be perfect, but I think we’ll work it out.”

[From ET Canada]

OMG, no. There is no reason to “test” someone by making them cry then making them a drink. That’s not an initiation or rite of passage. That’s being cruel. Call me old fashioned, but you should be able to tell if someone will fit in with your family by getting to know them. Some families tease each other, but it should never be mean-spirited. Does this mean that MM agrees with Ma Mac calling Camila by his ex-girlfriends’ names and everything else she put his wife through? He should have told his mother to stop. I really hope Matthew and Camila do not use this same testing strategy with their kids. Break the cycle of abuse now. Start your own, positive family traditions and rites of passages. Your kids will thank you for it.

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Photos credit: Backgrid, Avalon.red and Getty

Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves have been together since 2006 and married since 2012. They have three children, Levi, 15, Vida, 13 and Livingston, 10. Over the years, we’ve heard a fair amount of stories about his mom, Mary “Kay” McCabe. For instance, early into Matthew’s fame, he stopped speaking to Kay for 8 years in order to set boundaries. Earlier this year, McConaughey shared that during his parents’ second divorce before their third time marrying (a wild bit of trivia in its own right), his mom got her Biblical knowledge on with Woody Harrelson’s dad. And, who can forget that time Kay told everyone about her husband-of-three-times’ climatic death (also written about in MM’s book)?

Well, now we’ve got a new Kay McCabe story to feed on. On a recent episode of the Southern Living’s Biscuits and Jam podcast, Camila revealed that when she first started dating starting Matthew, Ma Mac was not exactly the easiest of in-laws to get along with.

On Tuesday’s episode of Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam podcast, Camila Alves-McConaughey revealed that she and the Interstellar actor’s mom, Mary Kathleen McCabe (who’s referred to as “Ma Mac” by the family), did not get along when the couple first started dating in 2006.

The Brazilian model recalled, “She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right? She was really testing me. I mean, really testing me.” Alves-McConaughey listed examples, sharing, “She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriends’ names; she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting [me] down a bit. I mean, all kinds of stuff.”

Alves-McConaughey admirably didn’t let the hostility deter her from trying to forge a more friendly bond with her future mother-in-law. She continued, “I got a job to go to Istanbul to go do a fashion show there, and that job comes with the perks of you get another first-class ticket, you get another night’s hotel room, you get this, you get the driver. And I was like, ‘Ma Mac, you’re gonna come with me.’”

“The whole way there, the whole plane ride to Istanbul, she was telling me all these stories and putting all these things in my head,” the model shared. “When we landed, I was like, ‘Okay, all right. Let me buckle up. Let me get ready for this situation.’”

Alves-McConaughey recounted, “About day three, I was taking her to her room, and she got into this whole other thing that it’s not my place to share, and she starts crying, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ You know, ‘Ma Mac!’ and feeling so sorry. And as I put her to bed, I look at her and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh. She’s full of [expletive].’”

Deciding to give McCabe a taste of her own medicine, the model shared, “I just [flipped] it on her and brought my spicy Brazilian, Latin side, and I let her have it. So I went back at her, and we had it back and forth, back and forth.” And finally: “She just looked at me and she was like, ‘Okay. Now you’re in.’ All she wanted was for me to fight back,” Alves-McConaughey revealed.

The model’s determination paid off — she explained, “From that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship, and I have so much respect for her. She has so much respect for me.” Alves-McConaughey may have had to dig her feet in and grab the bull by the horns, but it sure did pay off.

[From Yahoo]

Every family dynamic is different, and judging from Matthew’s autobiography, Greenlights, his family was truly one-of-a-kind, off-the-charts-in-a-gross-way unconventional. It can be difficult to enter or bring someone into a new dynamic, let alone one as bonkers as that one. I know she was never going to be your average mother-in-law, but Ma Mac’s approach feels somewhat abusive. When I first started dating Mr. Rosie, his entire family told me up front that teasing was their way of showing affection, and if they teased me, it meant I was in. I appreciated that head’s up. Do any of you have any good in-law stories? Maybe I’m being sensitive, but I don’t see how calling someone by their partner’s exes’ names, putting them down, or using broken dialect to speak to them in their native tongue is endearing at all. It’s pretty f—ked up. Ha, maybe telling this story is Camila’s lowkey way of getting revenge.

Photos credit: Thibault Monnier/LCD, Max DeAngelo, PacificCoastNews / Avalon, Backgrid