Matthew McConaughey Talks About Terrifying Experience

Last month, Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila Alves, were on a Lufthansa flight from Austin, Texas, to Frankfurt, Germany, when the pilot had to make an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. The Dallas Buyers Club star spoke about the terrifying experience with Kelly Ripa in a preview clip from the Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast.

“It’s suspended disbelief. I mean, it’s zero gravity,” he said. “My tray table is what held me down. I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened. Calling it a “hell of a scare,” McConaughey said he “immediately reached over, made sure Camila had her seatbelt on.”

“Your red wine and the glass and the plates that your food was on are all suspended, floating, still just in the air. And to look at it for that long, which wasn’t that long — one, two, three, four [seconds] — and then everything just comes crashing down,” he added.

The FAA told People that this particular flight was 37,000 feet above Tennessee when it experienced “severe turbulence.” The plane landed at the airport in Virginia “without incident,” but seven people were hospitalized.