Matthew McConaughey Has One Condition To Play True Detective's Rust Cohle Again

When the first season of Nic Pizzolatto's "True Detective" debuted on HBO on January 12, 2014, television viewers got swept up in a peculiar, ominous mystery driven by two perfectly paired stars in Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. The entire run had a rare stylistic cohesiveness due to every episode being written by Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, and it got its hooks in deep by placing an occult, almost Lovecraftian spin on its serial killer narrative.

By the end of that first season, we'd been treated to a spaced-out acting masterclass by McConaughey, whose Louisiana State Detective Rust Cohle would trail off on bizarre monologues where he made such profound-seeming observations as "time is a flat circle." I could never decide if Cohle was full of it or legitimately plugged into some kind of higher consciousness, but I do know that I loved watching McConaughey savor every last word of Pizzolatto's deliciously overheated dialogue.

So I'm somewhat excited that McConaughey isn't closed off to the idea of revisiting Cohle in another season of "True Detective." But he won't show up unless Pizzolatto (or someone else) presents him a script that recaptures the magnificence of season 1. "We nailed that first season," said McConaughey in an interview with Variety. "But if it's a script like that first one, with that fire and originality, I'd do it."

All McConaughey asks is that Cohle be given a monologue as compelling as what he had 11 years ago.

As McConaughey told Variety, "And you talk about monologues. Well, Rust Cohle had a monologue. He talked about everything that was inside him, and he didn't care if you were listening or not. There's freedom in that."

It's important to note that McConaughey isn't talking about literal dialogue. Not entirely, at least. McConaughey often speaks in metaphors, which is alternately charming and annoying. Earlier in the interview with Variety, he said, "Any character that I play, I always ask, 'What's their monologue?' Whether it's subtext or whether it's spoken, you gotta have your monologue before you can say your dialogue."

What I believe he's saying is that he needs to build a backstory for his character that might not be there in the script. This is how actors fully embody a role. You have to understand your character to convincingly walk around in their shoes. When McConaughey is at his best (as he was in "True Detective," "Dazed and Confused," and "The Dallas Buyers Club"), the buy-in is complete.

While I feel like I got everything I needed from Rust Cohle in that first season of "True Detective," I'm open to watching him peel apart a beer can while pursuing another case. This is crime fiction, after all. We're used to revisiting gumshoes from one book or episode to another. Let 'er rip, Nic.