Camila Alves detailed the terrible behavior she experienced from her now mother-in-law, Kay, before she tied the knot with husband Matthew McConaughey.
“She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right? She was really testing me,” the Women of Today founder said during an appearance on Southern Living’s “Biscuits & Jam” podcast on Tuesday.
“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 me down a bit. I mean, all kinds of stuff,” Alves said of McConaughey’s mother, who they call “Ma Mac.”
Things came to a head when Alves flew Ma Mac out with her on a trip for a fashion show. The whole way there, Alves said that Ma Mac was “telling me all these stories and putting all these things in my head.”
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“About day three I was taking her to her room, and she got into this whole other thing that’s not my place to share,” Alves said. “And she starts crying, and I’m like ‘Oh, my gosh, Ma Mac,’ feeling so sorry [for her]. And as I put her to bed, I look at her, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh. She’s full of shit.’”
That triggered something in Alves, who said the moment brought out her “spicy Brazilian, Latin side” and she let Ma Mac “have it.”
“I went back at her, and we had it back and forth, back and forth. And then at the end she just looked at me like, ‘Okay, now you’re in,’” Alves explained. “All she wanted was for me to fight back.”
“And then from that day on ― that night on ― we have the most amazing relationship,” she continued. “And I have so much respect for her, she has so much respect for me. I mean it can get tricky sometimes, you know, but we always end with a good laugh and a joke.”
McConaughey himself has written and spoken about the ups and downs he’s had with his mom. The two were estranged for nearly 10 years, after the “Dallas Buyers Club” actor said his mom began leaking personal details about him to the press.
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“I was calling my mom at that time, after I’d gotten famous, needing to talk to my mom,” the author said during an appearance on “The Howard Stern Show” in 2020. “And my mom was not the only one on the phone. The woman that was on the phone was a fan ― of my fame.”
“I would have conversations, and then all of a sudden — whoop — what we’d talked about would end up in the paper three days later,” he said. “I was, like, ‘Mom, that was between us!’”
While the two had a “strenuous relationship for eight years,” McConaughey said the two are “completely back now,” albeit with some boundaries in place.
“We went through it, and we’re on the other side of it,” the actor told Stern. “It’s good.”