Blink Twice star Channing Tatum shares Hugh Jackman admission

Channing Tatum has revealed why starring alongside Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine was a moment he’ll never forget. Watch the video.

Channing Tatum didn’t even know his now fiancee Zoe Kravitz when she first approached him with a role in her new movie Blink Twice.

The star of The Batman, Big Little Lies and High Fidelity was moving behind the camera to direct her first feature film and initially sounded out Tatum through their mutual friend, Riley Keogh.

So how did Tatum feel that Kravitz thought he was the right man to play a narcissistic tech billionaire with a secret psychopathic streak in the psychological thriller that was initially titled Pussy Island?

“Concerned, was my first thought,” says Tatum with a laugh over Zoom call, alongside his Blink Twice co-star Naomi Ackie. “I was like ‘hmm, that’s interesting – why would you think of me for this? Huh? Is there something I don’t know that everybody thinks about me?

“I definitely know that no one thinks that I’m a tech billionaire. I’m not a Steve Jobs-y type. But no, we had a really beautiful conversation, and she definitely laid out to me that this is something that she really believes is a smart and interesting exploration, and one that I was like ‘Oh that is an adventure and an exploration that I am very, very here for’, so I was grateful that she even thought of me.”

Zoe Kravitz and Channing Tatum attend the Blink Twice premiere in Los Angeles on August 8. Picture: AFP

Later that same year, Hollywood producer and predator Harvey Weinstein was exposed, escalating the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, followed by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a few years later and, while Kravitz says her story is about “people” rather and any particular person, the revelations gave it an added urgency and relevance.

“Women are being told to smile, every day, all the time,” Kravitz says. “We are expected to ‘forget’ moments of discomfort, terror and abuse, and to keep pretending we are having a good time. We are expected to play the game.”

Channing Tatum and Zoe Kravitz with Naomi Ackie. Picture: Getty Images

Ackie, recently seen as Whitney Houston in the biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, plays Blink Twice’s heroine Frida, a waitress who wants a better life and is charmed by Tatum’s uber-rich, seemingly woke Slater King and whisked away to his private island paradise. As the champagne flows and every luxury is laid on by King and his squad of pals, she and the other women begin to realise that the outward appearances are deceiving and something terrible is lurking just below the surface.

Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie in Blink Twice. Picture: Amazon

London-born Ackie says that Kravitz’s observations about women expecting to be ‘on’ all the time resonated with her deeply.

“I’ve been down the street sometimes thinking big, real thoughts and some guy’s like ‘smile baby’,” she says. “And I’m like ‘I’m sorry, pardon? Excuse me?. My smile is not for anyone but for myself. And if I choose not to use it, sir, that is none of your business’.

“That pressure for women to present themselves as in service to male pleasure in terms of ego, and validation and stuff – that is not what we’re put on Earth to do. I think that pressure is unspoken and this, to me, spoke on that.”

Actor Channing Tatum and director Zoe Kravitz on the set of Blink Twice. Picture: Amazon

Kravitz says that she was attracted to Tatum’s “good natured demeanour” for the role of King, and thought that his charm would make the audience feel safe. She also had a feeling that Tatum was a feminist thanks to his female-skewed Magic Mike movies, in which he played an exotic dancer. Tatum is not sure he’d use the world himself – he prefers “equalist” – is effusive about the role that women have played in his life.

“I don’t know how to say ‘yeah, I’m a card-carrying feminist’ but of course I would love to say that because I do believe in the female archetype,” he says.

“I believe in the feminine and I was raised by women. I love my mum and I love my sister. My sister was a huge, huge factor in my life, and she was a very strong, strong feminist. And now I have a daughter. I just believe in women in general, and I’ve gotten a chance to work with a lot of female directors weirdly, now that I look back on it.

Zoe Kravitz and Channing Tatum at the photocall for Blink Twice in London on August 18. Picture: Getty Images

Tatum and Kravitz were romantically involved by the time Blink Twice was shooting in Mexico in 2022, and the pair became engaged last October. After co-directing his first film, Dog, in 2020 – an experience he described as “a pseudo-controlled avalanche” – Tatum knew the all-encompassing nature of what his partner was going through.

“Being a director and sitting in that seat, there’s nothing like it,” he says. “Zoe and I have both gotten the chance to work with some of the best filmmakers that have ever worked in this business … we got to watch and cherry pick the things that we love but you can never understand what it’s like to actually sit (in that seat). I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like but you sit in that seat, and you’re just like ‘holy shit, this is not ever something that I could have really understood or imagined’.”

Having worked with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Steven Soderbergh in the past, Tatum says he was impressed by the breadth of Kravitz’s skills and singular vision, particularly for a first-time director.

The cast of Blink Twice, (from left) Simon Rex, Trew Mullen, Channing Tatum, Naomi Ackie, Christian Slater and Alia Shawkat at SiriusXM's Town Hall in Los Angeles. Picture: Getty Images

“Some people lead with their intellect – they’re very mind-centric and they can see the 30,000-foot view,” he says. “Other people lead with their heart and their intuition and their feeling, and they’re very emotional and they want to lead through that way.

“She’s probably one of the only people that I’ve ever worked with in my entire life that leads with both. She has an incredibly balanced mind and heart and intuition.

“And also, she’s just dope – she has taste, man. She’s just like ‘that is cool, and that’s not’ or ‘I don’t like how you did that; I do like the way you did that’. It’s like a very intuition-like, reactional thing, but also the ability to be able to back up for a second and dissect why she liked that and that’s rare.”

With Blink Twice hitting cinemas this week and his well-received rom-com with Scarlett Johansson, Fly Me To the Moon, still on a few screens, it’s been a good year so far for Tatum. But the icing on the cake has been his surprise appearance in the Marvel smash Deadpool & Wolverine, in which he fulfilled a long-held dream of playing Gambit alongside Wesley Snipes’ Blade and Jennifer Garner’s Elektra.

Jennifer Garner, Chris Evans, Channing Tatum and Wesley Snipes during the Marvel Studios: The Ultimate Deadpool & Wolverine Celebration Of Life panel at the 2024 Comic-Con International in San Diego, California. Picture: Getty Images

Tatum had tried and failed to get a stand-alone movie about the card-throwing, staff-swinging superhero off the ground and hopes that the cheers that greeted his character’s appearance in the billion-dollar hit will mean that he has a future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I’m hoping that there’s more to come,” he says. “I’m praying and I’m crossing fingers, crossing everything that I have. I’m rubbing pennies together, lucky things, whatever I’ve got to do.”

Whether or not it happens, Tatum says that the experience of acting alongside Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was reward enough – and almost more than a film nerd like him could handle.

“This is not anything against Wesley, because like he truly is the Godfather, but Hugh will always be Marvel daddy to me,” Tatum says of the Aussie A-lister who has played the metal-clawed mutant for 25 years.

“They’ll never be another Wolverine for me. I had a full on, existential experience just looking over and Wolverine was standing next to me. And I know Hugh and have hung out with Hugh as a buddy, but I didn’t realise what it was going to do to me physically to be there. I just couldn’t take it.

“As a nerd, they would be yelling action and I was just like ‘look at him, he’s doing the thing, he’s doing that thing! Oh my god!’. I was freaking out, I was losing my mind and the fact that he’s just such a class act and is so good at what he does, and he’s still cares man.

“He could phone that character in and there’s no one that’s going to beat it, but honestly he just cares and gives it, man. It’s extraordinary.”

Blink Twice and Deadpool and Wolverine are in cinemas now

Originally published as Blink Twice star Channing Tatum shares Hugh Jackman admission