Matthew McConaughey Addresses Decision to Not Run for Governor of Texas

After a marathon of speculation, not to mention some headlined comments from the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club actor himself, Matthew McConaughey formally announced last month that he would, in fact, not be vying for the title of governor in his home state of Texas.

During an appearance on Tuesday’s The Tonight Show in promotion of Sing 2, McConaughey—as seen around the 4:10 mark in the video up top—was asked about this decision.

“Well, it was a two-year consideration [but] I came to the decision, really, over the last couple of months,” he told host Jimmy Fallon. “And I was asking the original question and trying to answer it: How and where and what can I do to be most useful? To myself, to my family, and to the most amount of people.”

From there, McConaughey pointed to the number of other obligations currently on his plate.

“The embassy, the category of politics, came up and it’s a privileged one that I gave great consideration to,” he said. “But, at this point in my life with the things I’ve got—a 13-year-old, an 11-year-old, and an 8-year-old, the life I’m living right now, the storytelling that I wanna keep doing—it’s not the category for me at this point in my life.”

Of course, given still-very-recent events, we probably shouldn’t be further promoting the idea of such crossovers into politics. At any rate, the McConaughey gubernatorial possibility is one that’s been floating around for some time now.

Toward the end of his discussion with Fallon on Tuesday, McConaughey—whose most recent live-action entry was the 2019 Guy Ritchie film The Gentlemen—was asked if he had ruled out such a thing for the future. “I’m not until I am,” the actor responded, adding that someone recently told him that was “a very McConaughey answer.”

See the full discussion up top. Below, see McConaughey and Fallon joined by Haim for a holiday-themed sketch and performance.