Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson Embrace a Very Real Family Rumor in Apple TV’s Brothers

3 min readEVERYONE KNOWS THAT Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are one of the great duos in show business. After meeting and becoming friends on the set of the 1999 comedy film EdTV, the actors began a long friendship, along the way collaborating again for the first season of True Detective, widely considered to be one of the great television shows of all time.But did you know that in addition to being great friends, the two might also be half-relatives? That’s the premise of Apple TV’s new comedy series Brothers, which reunites the duo on screen for the first time since 2014’s True Detective, and pulls from a bit of very real mythology that the two only relatively recently discovered on their own. “Matthew’s mother, I’d known her 25 years, and she told me, ‘I knew your father.’ You know, like, with the ellipses: ‘I knew… your father’” Harrelson told Variety. “She tells me, and I’m thinking, ‘What’s behind this story?’ And then I find out they weren’t just friends—there was a little more to it.”Brothers, in turn, stars McConaughey and Harrelson as fictional versions of themselves exploring this possibility. Think of it as the meta-nature of Curb Your Enthusiasm, combined with the goofiness of a family sitcom like Schitt’s Creek or Malcolm in the Middle, and, of course, the star power of True Detective.Now, just because they made the show doesn’t mean that McConaughey believes the story. “Woody thinks he knows that we’re brothers, and it’s not that I don’t want to know—I don’t believe it,” McConaughey told Variety at the show’s premiere. “My mom’s the one who started this whole damn thing, by saying ‘I knew… your father… with the long pause after that. Even my five-year-old son understood the innuendo of what that meant.”So, are the A-listers actually brothers? You figure they could just take a DNA test and figure out once and for all. But for now, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. “I’ve been wanting to, but he refuses,” Harrelson told The Hollywood Reporter. McConaughey then added that maybe that could change in the future—but he’s a little frightened about what it could mean. “I’ll probably come around to it,” he said. “If it’s true, I’ve got a lot to unpack. If it’s not true, he’s not going to be near as fun to hang out with.”There’s a lot to figure out for these two. But in the meantime, why not see how fictional Matthew and Woody handle it? Below, we’ve got all the information to make sure you don’t miss an episode of Apple TV’s Brothers. Watch Brothers HereWhen is the next episode of Brothers coming out?The next episode of Brothers will officially come out on Wednesday, September 30. But as with all Apple TV shows, it'll release a bit early the night prior. So if you're eager, keep an eye out for the next episode on the evening of Tuesday, September 29.How many episodes of Brothers are left?The debut season of Brothers will run for eight episodes, with episodes rolling out on a weekly basis, the first two of which have now aired. That means there are still six more weeks—and six episodes of Matthew and Woody’s brotherly (or not-so-brotherly) chaos—remaining in the show’s first season.Here's the complete release schedule for Apple TV's Brothers:Episode 1, “On the Road” - Now streaming as of September 23Episode 2, “The Hunt” - Now streaming as of September 23Episode 3, “Little Woody” - Streaming on September 30 Episode 4, “The Band” - Streaming on October 7 Episode 5, “Valentine’s Day” - Streaming on October 14Episode 6, “The Dance” - Streaming on October 21Episode 7, “The Interview” - Streaming on October 28 Episode 8, “On the Road Again. Again” - Streaming on November 4 Evan is the culture editor for Men's Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn't.