Mike “Rooster” McConaughey and Wayne “Butch” Gilliam are looking to make some ambitious entrepreneurs’ American dream a reality in their new show Rooster & Butch on A&E.
The pair are looking for new investment opportunities, and the reality show will follow entrepreneurs who go to West Texas looking to win over the TV personalities so they can invest in their companies. The self-made millionaires talked to Us Weekly about their new show and what they look for in people before helping them find success.
“Don’t measure success with wealth,” McConaughey, 63, tells Us. “The American dream to me is just success any way that you can have it. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make a ton of money.”
Gilliam and McConaughey said their 40-year friendship will be beneficial to the young entrepreneurs. “Rooster and I’ve we’ve got a lot of history prior to the show. We’ve done a lot of things together that’s been some good, some disastrous, and some in-between,” Gilliam tells Us. “That’s some of the things we think we had to offer some of the young entrepreneurs. It’s not so much about what to do. It’s maybe what not to do. We’ve got a lot of history there. We’ve done a lot of things together that we’re proud of.”
He continued, “A lot of people ask us, ‘What are you looking for in an investor?’ We’re looking for someone that reminds us of ourselves. Maybe at a different point in time in our lives.”
When the oil pipe businessman decided to star in his own TV shows, his little brother, actor Matthew McConaughey, had some words of wisdom about the entertainment industry. Rooster tells Us: “I think some of the best advice was when Butch and I agreed to get into this show business. He [Matthew] just said, ‘Whatever you do, you guys just be you. Just be you and it’s going to be great. Just be you no matter what.’”
Rooster says he also gave the Interstellar actor, 48, some advice before he headed to Hollywood to pursue his acting career. “When Matthew went to California to work my advice to him was, ‘Listen, whatever you do, just make your money, put it in the bank, don’t listen to anybody with these grand schemes. Don’t do anything. Just stick it in the bank until one day you can afford to lose some in an investment,’” he tells Us. “He’s put it in T-bonds. I still think he’s got more in T-bonds than anybody I know. He’s not a big gambler on stuff.”
So how did the Oscar winner and the businessman end up working in such different businesses? “He got discovered drinking with a casting director, Don Phillips. And I got discovered drinking with Paul Hernandez, a truck driver,” the A&E star quipped. “If you look at him he looks a hell of a lot more like a movie star than I do. He’s a hell of a lot better looking than I am. I got all the bad genes. I siphoned them out. I filtered them out for him.”
Rooster & Butch premieres on A&E on Wednesday, January 10 at 10 p.m. ET.
