Matthew McConaughey Defends Mother After Wife Camila Alves Revealed ‘Playful’ Feud

Matthew McConaughey is standing up to give his mother a little defense after folks seemed to take his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey revealed there was a bit of a feud between the two. According to PEOPLE, McConaughey used his appearance on Whine Down with Jana Kramer to clear the confusion and reveal that things are just peachy with the family.

“My family – and part of Camila and I as well – we cherish the value of a sense of humor and comedy,” the Dazed and Confused star said. “Camila wasn’t wounded about it. What tickles us may bruise others.”

Alves spoke about the relationship with her mother-in-law back in August during an appearance on Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam podcast. She essentially laid out that the elder McConaughey was testing her back when she first got together with her husband.

“She was really testing me. I mean really testing me,” she said. “She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriend’s names, she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting down a bit, all kinds of stuff.”

But this doesn’t mean Alves just let the punishment come in without giving a little back, the goal of McConaughey’s mother in the end Alves would learn. “At the end, she just looks at me and she was like, ‘OK, now you’re in.’ All she wanted was for me to fight back, and from that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship,” Alves adds. “I have so much respect for her, she has so much respect for me. It can get tricky sometimes, but we always end with a good laugh.”

“She tested my feelings and tested the woman I had the feelings for. Big picture, that’s pretty cool, actually,” McConaughey added on Kramer’s podcast. “My family is big on rites of passage and initiation, and you don’t get into the McConaughey family easily.”

Even Woody Harrelson is going to have to get a DNA test if he wants to find himself an official brother in the McConaughey family. Honorary brother might have to suffice for now. “My family, we humbly wait, we make you cry, and then we pick you up and make your favorite drink, ‘You’re welcome back.’ So there are initiations, rites of passage that my family’s always enjoyed,” McConaughey says.