Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey happy to work together again in new rom-com Fool's Gold

Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey let it all hang out, almost literally and certainly in the figurative sense.


"I think they love to push each other's buttons," says Andy Tennant, the Hollywood director who re-teamed the goofy blonds as ex-lovers for his new movie romp. It is a romantic adventure-comedy called Fool's Gold. Hudson and McConaughey also co-starred in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in 2003.


"Listen, they're like chalk and cheese," Tennant says. "They come at it differently. They're different kinds of people. They're more brother and sister than anything else."


Sure enough, for the promotional interviews for the pending release of Fool's Gold, Warner Bros. puts them together. McConaughey is 38 but boyish. Hudson is 28 and still girlish. They banter, they prod, they tease, they talk over each other's lines. Both trumpet undying love -- as platonic friends -- then admit how much they annoy each other.


"The thing is," Hudson says, "it's really rare that you meet somebody and you work with somebody that you just love. I've had that a couple of times in my life with certain people where you just love them and you always will. And that's my relationship with Matthew. Even when I'm hating him, there's an honest love."


McConaughey grins at her admission. "It reminds me of something my mom used to say: 'I love ya but I don't like ya right now!' "


For his part, he admits he can be "a real annoyance" to Hudson. "She can be that way for me, too."


"A pain in my arse!" Hudson says of McConaughey.


So it is throughout. Yet the banter remains sunny and silly. Such as when they talk about her body, breasts and sensuality.


"I've seen you in the bikini in the poster," says McConaughey. "Hot!"


Both are burnished in gold, a reference to the sunken treasure that drives what plot the movie can muster. Hudson wears a sexy, skimpy bikini. She snuggles up to McConaughey who, in a rare moment, actually wears a T-shirt. In most of the movie, he is shirtless and showing off his chiselled torso. For the poster, they both look "hot".


"Those aren't my breasts, though," Hudson says. She throws it out with the kind of guileless honesty that always marks her conversations.


"They're not. They're totally not my boobs. No! Mine aren't that big, not like (Jennifer) Aniston's. They're like perfect (in the poster). They look great. I wish they were my breasts. If I ever got them done, I'd take that to the doctor and say: 'This is what I would like them to look like!'


"It's kind of like when you look at the cover of a magazine and your eyes are blue. But my eyes are green. Why are my eyes blue?"


Omigod, does Hollywood lie in its promotions?


"They sure embellish," McConaughey says.


But there is no embellishing the truth of the Fool's Gold shoot in Australia. It was harrowing. Most of the cast and crew were wary in general. Hudson was scared. McConaughey was excited.


"That was part of the fun," he says of the 'fear factor' of shooting the movie along the Australia's east coast, mostly in Queensland. Locations included Cairns, Port Douglas, Fraser Island, the Gold Coast and the waters around the Great Barrier Reef. Some scenes were wrapped in the Bahamas.


"We were immersed just about as deep in nature as you can be and still be working," McConaughey says of Australia. "Where we were living, I had this little beach shack at 4 Mile Beach in Port Douglas. The rainforest is right behind us and the ocean, with the Great Barrier Reef, is right upon us. So you had everything coming out of the jungle and everything coming out of the sea and even the sky you had to keep an eye on."


Among other joys, McConaughey had an eight-foot python hanging out in his yard. "I was like: 'All right, that's cool. Is that normal? Yeah.' But do you still come home and look under your bed? Yeah!"


Hudson's challenge was different. "I had one of those funnel web spiders in my house."


"Where we were," McConaughey adds, "there definitely wasn't a safe spot to go get away from it all."


Says Tennant: "Seven of the top 10 things that can kill you are in Australia -- and they were in our garages and houses."


Hudson had to grapple with her fear, especially for open water scenes where she was diving with McConaughey. And they also had to create a kind of love-hate chemistry that the romantic comedy part of the movie requires.


"In my experience," Hudson says of onscreen chemistry, "now that it's been a decade that I've been working, I would say that you cannot manufacture it."


"You can try," McConaughey says. "I've seen people try, but it's in between the lines where I'll see something and go: 'No, those two didn't quite have it.'


"One of the things that is consistent in this is that you've got to want us to get together. You've got to really hope that we get together. Even if you feel they will get together in the end, you've got to really want to see how."


"The thing is," Hudson says, "you know the ending."


"Sure," says McConaughey, "it's a good safe bet that they'll get together but I want to see how they do it and I want to see them jack with each other the whole time. I want to see them have a misunderstanding and have her whack him with a cane.


"That's the flirt. That's the courtship. That's the dance that she and I just enjoy doing in a really natural way."