True Detective star Matthew McConaughey says he'd return as Rust Cohle if the script had the "fire and originality" of season 1: "We nailed that first season"

True Detective star Matthew McConaughey says he'd return to the hit HBO series, but only under one condition: the script would need to live up to season 1.

"We nailed that first season," he said in a new interview with Variety. "But if it’s a script like that first one, with that fire and originality, I’d do it. And you talk about monologues. Well, Rust Cohle had a monologue. He talked about everything that was inside him, and he didn’t care if you were listening or not. There’s freedom in that."

Each season of the anthology crime drama centers around a different pair of detectives in a different part of the US. Season 1, which aired in 2014, saw McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, Louisiana State Police homicide detectives investigating the murder of a young woman. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and the show has never quite returned to the highs of its first season.

"I watched it weekly, like everyone else, on Sunday night, and that was an event for me," the actor previously said of his season. "And I got to sit back and enjoy that. I loved the water cooler talk on Monday morning. Even though I made it, I sort of forgot what was going to happen next. It was one of the great events in TV."

Subsequent installments of True Detective have starred Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams, Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, and Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, taking the action from California to the Ozarks to Alaska. The upcoming fifth season will be set in New York State, and reportedly stars Nicolas Cage. "He’s a great actor, and I’d like to see him in that world," McConaughey said of Cage's casting.

True Detective season 5 doesn't have a release date yet. While we wait for more updates, check out our guide to the other best new TV shows still to come in 2025.