True Detective season 3: Matthew McConaughey is up for saving the show: ‘I miss Rust Cohle, man’

'I was a happy man when I made that for six months, because I was on my own island'

(Photograph: HBOin)

True Detective’s fate is pretty uncertain after a very lacklustre second season, but, if it was done right, Matthew McConaughey would be up for a return to the glory days of season 1.

“I miss Rust Cohle, man,” he admitted on The Rich Eisen Show. “I miss watching him on Sunday nights.”

“It would have to be the right context, the right way,” McConaughey added of a potential return. “That thing - when I read [the original script] I knew in 20 minutes if I can play this guy, Rustin Cohle, I’m in.”

“I was a happy man when I made that for six months, because I was on my own island. Luckily my wife put up with me.”

Fun though it would be to have Rust back philosophising from the passenger seat, it’s probably more likely that the show, if indeed it does get a third season from HBO, forges forward with another new story.

Former HBO president Michael Lombardo took the blame for season 2 in January, confessing to having pushed show creator Nic Pizzolatto too hard.

“I set him up to deliver, in a very short time frame, something that became very challenging to deliver,” Lombardo said. That’s not what that show is. He had to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Find his muse. And so I think that’s what I learned from it. Don’t do that anymore.”