How Ryan Gosling almost ruined Matthew McConaughey’s ‘McConaissance’: “Rejected 87 times”
If you grew up in the 2000s, then you first became aware of Matthew McConaughey through movies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.
For a while, he was doing very well for himself as a handsome romantic lead, but eventually, this work started to dry up, and then something happened, something that changed the way we saw this man forever – The McConaissance.
Between 2011 and 2014, McConaughey started to move away from the roles he had been previously associated with to try something new – beginning with The Lincoln Lawyer, he started taking more serious, dramatic roles, which showed that he was capable of playing more than just suave jocks… This period, which also spawned films like Mud, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Interstellar, changed everyone’s minds on the Texan and culminated with a ‘Best Actor’ win at the 2014 Academy Awards.
The movie that earned McConaughey his statuette was Dallas Buyers Club – the role was Ron Woodroof, a rodeo cowboy whose life changed forever when he was diagnosed with AIDS… It’s a truly captivating performance and a very challenging watch, but it very nearly went to somebody else.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Robbie Brenner revealed that, owing to its subject matter, Dallas Buyers Club took a long time to make. He first read a script about Woodroof’s life in 1996, with Dennis Hopper initially envisioned to serve as director. Brenner didn’t initially start work on the film until 2001. He called on his old buddy Marc Forster, who’d just directed Halle Berry to an Oscar for Monster’s Ball, and had Brad Pitt in mind to play the lead character. Unfortunately, this plan fell through.
Dallas Buyers Club almost re-emerged in 2008, this time with Craig Gillespie as the director and Ryan Gosling as the leading man. Once again, however, studios just weren’t willing to take the risk. “It got rejected 87 times,” Brenner said. “They said, ‘AIDS isn’t hot-button anymore. It’s period. Script’s great, but it’s been around too long.’”
It took a project that Brenner was working on with director Jean-Marc Vallée falling through for Dallas Buyers Club to finally receive the greenlight. By this point, Pitt and Gosling were out of the picture, so they needed somebody new to bring Woodruff to life. “I wasn’t sure about Matthew at first,” Vallée confessed. “’Mr The Most Handsome Man With Muscles’? Then I met him and found a man who really wanted to change perceptions and have new challenges in his career.”
As we all know, McConaughey did eventually land the part, and it changed his life. He was born just up the road from where the events of the film took place, so he was able to accurately recreate the macho culture of the South and then flip it on its head with Woodroof’s diagnosis. He also lost 50lbs to convincingly portray the effects of AIDS, showing a level of dedication that you don’t get from every actor.
As for Brenner, his faith in the project was rewarded with a nomination for ‘Best Picture’ on the same night that McConaughey secured his place in Oscars history.
