by Hera Hoi – EM TV Online
Channing Tatum is one of Hollywood’s hottest stars with three back-to-back $100 million triumph, and he is currently filming the sequel of Magic Mike: Magic Mike XXL.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the former stripper-turned-actor described the intensity of his recent films and how incredible telling stories has been for him.
Magic Mike XXL tells the story of a road-trip from Tampa to Myrtle Beach for a stripper convention.
The 34-year-old explained how Magic Mike XXL is his last film with strippers.
“The stripper movie that’ll end all stripper movies,” he said keenly.
“We won’t need to make, no like third instalment. Unless I go bankrupt or something and then make a third one on my Iphone,” the actor joked.
According to Tatum, XXL was actually picked by the internet; there had been so much creativity that was not put into the first movie, and so came the second instalment.
“Like we go to this – I don’t know why we called it ‘the convention’ – it’s not a bunch of strippers and boobs, like selling stripper stuff, and I think people know that it’s a road trip movie now and Mike finds himself in the midst of these guys (Bomer and Manganiello) again,” he said, describing XXL’s plot.
When he was asked about XXL studio time, he described the filming to be ‘awkward’ at times, and no one could really understand what they are really like.
“At the same time it’s really funny. We laugh a lot,” he added.
When Tatum was asked to compare XXL with his 2014 biographical drama film Foxcatcher, he revealed that both studio times were nothing alike.
The 2014 film tells the gripping true story of Olympic Wrestling Champion brothers Mark and Dave Schultz and their relationship with the peculiar John Du Pont.
“The training for Foxcatcher specifically, there is a lot of laughing because you have to break the tension, but it is nothing like Magic Mike. I mean Fox catcher almost broke me.”
“I met Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher director) about seven years ago for this role specifically. I had just done A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and I didn’t really know much about acting, I would admittedly say.”
“I wouldn’t have known where to begin without actually having Mark Schultz,” he said gratefully.
Truthfully he had been terrified to meet the Olympic champion himself. Tatum described Mark as “unbridedledly open.” Everything he had portrayed through the character, was all Mark – how he walked, and how he ate – nothing was missed or exaggerated.
Apart from filming on set 13 to 15 hours, the hours afterwards were spent in the gym wrestling every single day, and sometimes even before their studio time.
“The movie will live forever and people will see this film, and that is what I’m so thankful for. And all the rest of it is just like an amazing icing.”
“Telling stories is my greatest love and I think we told a pretty great one.”
