“I miss Rust Cohle, man,” McConaughey admitted on DirecTV’s Rich Eisen Show. “I miss watching him on Sunday nights.”

The sentiment is not only shared by first-season True Detective viewers, but by HBO, which dealt with disastrous reviews when the second season of the Nic Pizzolatto-created drama, starring Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, and Colin Farrell, failed to live up to the first. In fact the feedback to the sophomore season was so troubling that HBO reportedly only agreed to grant the show a third season if Pizzolatto changed the way he runs the series. Pizzolatto and HBO are presumably looking for a season-three Hail Mary, and McConaughey hinted that he reached out to his former collaborator to discuss the possibility of returning, despite the show’s anthology format.

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

And why is McConaughey so desperate to get back into the disturbed character, which earned him an Emmy nomination? Apparently exploring Rust brought him a lot of joy . . . strangely.

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