Editor's Note: This entry contains major spoilers from the movie Interstellar.

About

Matthew McConaughey Crying, also known as Matthew McConaughey Sobbing In Interstellar, refers to a reaction image, GIF and series of parody videos based on a scene from the 2014 science fiction film Interstellar in which the main protagonist Cooper (played by actor Matthew McConaughey) reacts emotionally and cries while watching a backlog of video messages sent from his family over the course of decades. After appearing in the movie, the scene of McConaughey crying was spread online throughout the 2010s and 2020s as it became a prevalent reaction meme to express sadness about something, both genuine and ironic.

Origin

In the film, after a reconnaissance mission on the planet, Miller goes horribly wrong, Cooper and the rest of the group return to their spaceship, only to discover that 23 years had passed during their hours-long operation on the planet due to the heavy time dilation caused by its proximity to a black hole. What follows afterwards is a highly emotional scene, wherein Cooper begins watching all of the video recordings that were transmitted to the spaceship from his children on Earth over the course of the last two decades.

On December 28th, 2014, the McConaughey Reacts YouTube channel was created. On the same day, the channel uploaded its first videos, which feature Matthew McConaughey reacting to Keyboard Cat.

On December 29th, the channel uploaded another video in which Matthew McConaughey Reacts to Grape Stomping Lady. Together, both videos accumulated over 9,000 views as of May 2015.

Spread

On April 16th, 2015, YouTuber oskararnarson uploaded a video that shows an edited version of the scene, which depicts Matthew McConaughey reacting to the second teaser trailer of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Within a month, the video gathered more than 9.7 million views.

The video was posted on the /r/videos subreddit the next day, where it gathered around 4,933 upvotes and 1,171 comments as of May 2015^[1].

The video was also covered by various news sites such as Hollywood Reporter^[2], The Verge^[3], Moviefone^[4], Hollywood Life^[5] and Slash Film.^[6]

On April 17th, 2015, YouTuber Tyrone Magnus uploaded a video of himself reacting to the Star Wars reaction video. Within less than a month, the video gathered over 39.000 views.

On April 20th, 2015, the YouTube channel The Reel Rejects uploaded a video that shows Ryan and Sally reacting to the Star Wars reaction video. As of May, 2015, the video gathered more than 43.000 views.

Matthew McConaughey Reacts To Meme

On February 2nd, 2026, while actor Matthew McConaughey appeared on the SiriusXM talk show How's Life with John Mayer, Mayer discussed the crying scene from Interstellar and asked McConaughey if he knew about it. McConaughey responded that he wasn't aware it had become a prevalent source for memes on the internet while the two were discussing the adoration for the film online over a decade after its release.

Various Examples

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