Matthew McConaughey Confirms He Nearly Played Joel in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Before Passing on the Role

Pedro Pascal’s turn as Joel Miller has become one of the defining performances in HBO’s celebrated video game adaptation, but the role almost went to a very different Oscar winner entirely. Before Pascal ever stepped into the role, ‘The Last of Us’ creator Craig Mazin had already floated the idea to another established leading man with his own history of prestige television success.

That leading man was Matthew McConaughey, who first earned major TV credibility through his Emmy-nominated lead performance in HBO’s original ‘True Detective.’ Mazin previously confirmed back in 2023 that he’d spoken with McConaughey about the role, though he was careful to note at the time that the conversation never got especially serious.

Now, speaking on Josh Horowitz’s Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, McConaughey has confirmed just how real those talks actually were on his end. Asked directly whether the conversation was serious, McConaughey responded, “I did,” explaining that the timing simply wasn’t right for him personally, since he wasn’t really acting much during that period of his life.

According to McConaughey, that stretch of his career was defined more by writing and exploring leadership-focused projects than by pursuing new acting roles. He acknowledged the show itself looked genuinely promising, recalling that he found it really good and was excited by what he’d seen, while also pointing back to how unusual it once was for film actors like himself and Woody Harrelson to commit to television series before ‘True Detective’ helped normalize that shift.

McConaughey went further in explaining exactly what gave him pause about signing on. He noted that a television series requires thinking years down the line, since success on a show like ‘The Last of Us’ would mean playing the same character for years and years and years, a commitment that didn’t align with where he was at the time.

That reasoning tracks with what eventually did pull McConaughey back into acting. He pointed to 2025’s ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ as the project that finally felt right, describing his draw to it specifically because it was a single, self-contained movie rather than an open-ended series commitment.

Mazin, for his part, has remained gracious about how things ultimately played out. He’s previously said that while McConaughey is an amazing actor and the alternate version of the show would likely have been great, he’s genuinely happy with the version they ultimately made starring Pascal, acknowledging simply that a different lead would have resulted in a different show entirely.

Pascal’s performance since taking on the role has made it increasingly difficult to imagine anyone else in Joel’s shoes, given how completely he’s come to define the character across both seasons of the acclaimed HBO series. Still, McConaughey’s confirmation offers a genuinely fascinating glimpse into an alternate version of the show that almost existed.

For McConaughey, the near-miss appears to carry no regret, framing his decision instead as a matter of timing rather than a missed opportunity he wishes had gone differently.

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