Matthew McConaughey’s wife, Camila Alves, said her mother-in-law, Mary McCabe, put her through some grueling tests before welcoming her into the family.
The Brazilian model said she was put through the wringer by her mother-in-law. McCabe used to call Alves by McConaughey’s ex-girlfriends’ names just to get under her skin and assess her reaction, Alves recalled during Tuesday’s episode of the “Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam” podcast.
“She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right? She was really testing me,” Alves said.
Alves described McCabe as “feisty” and spoke about the depths of her family struggles.
“I mean, really testing me,” she said. “She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriends’ 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 continued to be respectful to McConaughey’s mother, but admitted the situation was overwhelming and challenging. She said she eventually invited McCabe to join her on a work trip to Istanbul, where the two women in McConaughey’s life were able to form an unexpected bond.
“The whole way there, the whole plane ride to Istanbul, she was telling me all these stories and putting all these things in my head,” Alves said. She then noted that on day three of their trip, she realized she was being toyed with and jokingly said she discovered McCabe was “full of shit.”
That’s seemingly when the dynamics in their relationship really changed, and Alves realized her mother-in-law was just trying to see if she would “fight back.”
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“So I just flip it on her and brought my spicy Brazilian, Latin side, and I let her have it,” Alves said on the podcast. (RELATED: Matthew McConaughey Is Adding ‘Children’s Book Author’ To His Resume’)
“So 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 and she was like, ‘OK. Now you’re in.”
Alves said she and McCabe get along just fine now: “And then from that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship, and I have so much respect for her. She has so much respect for me.”