The actor said that the experience was 'just mortifying.'
Jason Bateman's podcast with Matthew McConaughey once went off the rails. On the latest episode of Smartless, the podcast Bateman hosts with Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, the trio welcomed the actor on for the first time after technical difficulties prevented his scheduled appearance a couple of years back.
After Arnett revealed the mystery guest to be McConaughey, he played back audio from the first failed attempt at having the Dallas Buyers Club star on the show.
In the old audio, a frazzled Bateman exclaimed, "Let's cancel. Let's reschedule this thing. I'm in a total f**king tailspin."
At that, McConaughey burst into laughter. Given that the actor had yet to be introduced as the surprise guest, Bateman didn't know who was laughing amid his tech trouble.
"Who the f**k is that? Great, that's helpful," Bateman annoyedly exclaimed, before leaving the call. Upon Bateman's departure, McConaughey piped up, reenacting what the last 30 minutes had sounded like to him.
"Let me tell you what I've heard here over the last 30 minutes," he told Arnett and Hayes. "'Ah, we gotta reboot here. My daughter's iPad got cloned and then it got wiped right before the dog peed on it, so I've got to reboot one more time. Wait a minute, it's buffering. Wait a minute, let me reinstall. No, it's installed, let me restart. We got a failure. I need a security check. Oh s**t, we got a virus. Can we reschedule this whole show? F**k that, every one be patient. Oh, s**t.'"
The Mud star noted that the whole thing had "been really entertaining," before quipping, "but not as entertaining as watching f**king Bateman over here."
Back in the present times, McConaughey laughed over the audio, noting, "Bateman was just glitching, wasn't he?"
Arnett mocked Bateman for his "rage quit," before revealing that McConaughey wasn't just making up his monologue, but had rather written Bateman's rant down "like a court reporter" and had been reading it off a piece of paper.
"Oh my God, that's just mortifying," Bateman admitted, before McConaughey quipped, "You were going on and on and you went so long, I was like, 'This is getting funnier and funnier and funnier.'"
For Bateman, who said he'd played a poor golf game just before his recorded freak out, the worst part of the whole thing was " hearing somebody laughing thinking it's Will or Sean and going, 'Who did that? That's not helpful!' And then I just slammed my laptop shut, took my ball and went home. It's not one of my prouder moments."
Arnett continued to tease Bateman for his "full meltdown," and the latter man admitted that he'd been "so angry" at the time.
"I think maybe you had told me it was a big guest so 'don't f**k around' kind of thing. I just knew I was blowing it," Bateman said. "... I'm dumb at hot-headed. It's not a great combo."
"You were tardy, dumb and hot-headed," McConaughey, who was on the show to promote his new children's book, Just Because, corrected.
"The fact that you've come back after that absolute wipeout, I can't thank you enough. I mean, you're the greatest," Bateman told McConaughey, before once again thinking back on their first podcast encounter.
"I found out afterward that it was you and I was like, 'Goddammit,'" Bateman said. "The fact that it was you laughing and I actually inadvertently yelled at you and slammed the laptop on you!"
McConaughey didn't seem to mind, laughing and telling Bateman, "It was high-quality entertainment."
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