FILM INTERVIEW: CHANNING TATUM

Star of 'Dear John' Talks Love Letters, Let Downs & The Happiness of Marriage

By: Izumi Hasegawa

February 2, 2010

Izumi Hasegawa: You never know what the cultural attitudes are going to be. When you’re making a film, it’s two years before the audience actually sees it. Do you think there has been a change in how people perceive the nobility or the choice that somebody might make to serve in a wartime situation rather than stay home and be with the woman he loves and take that road?

Channing Tatum: I think, if anything has changed, it’s more about the politics and the politicians. I don’t think anyone faults a soldier. If anything, I think it’s gotten more pro-soldier — in my mind, at least. I’m not a political person. When I start to get into it, it just upsets me that I feel so powerless when it comes to politics, so I’ve just decided to be non-political and very pro-soldier. I would love to talk to somebody that would fault a soldier for going and fighting for our country, because I would have a lot to say to them.

IH: You’ve played a soldier before, but I think this is the first time you’ve jumped into the romance genre. How is that?

CT: I don’t know. I think in all the movies, I’m in love with someone in my head. There’s always love in a film somewhere. It doesn’t matter even if it’s an action movie. This is more of the quiet type of love film, and a lot of sitting and talking. I went from G.I. Joe to this film, and it was such a great change of pace. You’re reacting to a tennis ball one moment, and now you’re sitting on a beach looking into a real person’s eyes and talking about real things with real emotions and great writing and great directing, and it was so easy to make the film. Obviously, there was some pretty heavy stuff there. I think you’ve seen [Lasse Hallstrom's] energy — such a laid back, sweet guy. He’s over there looking up YouTube videos just for fun in between takes. And the man is over there doing some weird dance or something, and we’re all just playing around, and then that energy just sort of went on into the scene. It didn’t matter if it was an angry scene or a fun scene. It just made the whole experience really simple and easy. But this is the first time I’ve done that love story type of movie, and I enjoyed it immensely. I want to do another one.

IH: We see “Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks,” and you say, “Okay. Somebody is going to be dying. There are going to be tears flowing.” One of the questions that came up with Nicholas is the line between drama and melodrama, because something that’s on the page can really get you weeping…

CT: Melodrama on the page is always good because you sort of calibrate it in your head, but seeing it in real life acted out is an entirely different thing. That’s why I think Lasse was perfect for this. He has an allergic reaction to a melodrama, but he likes to go and find it. We would constantly find where the ceiling was, just for fun. He’s like, “Alright, let’s just see where it’s not.” And we would just go and do the really bad version of it, and sometimes it wouldn’t be the bad version. Sometimes we’d find another little caveat to like explore, and he’d be like, “No, it was actually kind of good. Let’s just do it one more time and see if that has anything different in it.” It was just playing. It’s kind of nerve-wracking because he goes, “I’m going to give you the same freedom that I gave Leo (DiCaprio) on Gilbert Grape and I’m like, “What?! You’re saying you want me to be mentally challenged? What do you want from me? Don’t tell me that. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with that.” It terrifies you, but then it also makes you work harder and it makes you really show up prepared and with a plan, not just showing up figuring it out on the day, because that’s what he’s there for. And you start the scene how you want to start it, and then he starts nudging you. I think it’s just enough melodrama in there in certain parts, like, “I’ll see you soon then.” That could be done so badly, and I hope we didn’t do it badly. I think we did it right at that level where it could teeter if you give too much on it. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a coined phrase with anybody. I’ve had inside jokes and stuff with people, but not like “I’ll see you soon then” type of thing, and that’s really sentimental and it can mean so many different things. It could mean “Goodbye,” “Hello,” “I love you” — everything. That’s kind of a hard thing to do in a movie like that. I think Lasse did it very well.

IH: Is it easy to jump off the pier and dive into the ocean and the surf when it rains?

CT: It was fun. They almost didn’t let me do it. I pitched a fit. I was not happy with it. It was like a 10-foot drop. It wasn’t that far. The stunt guys were doing it. They went down and saw that there was nothing under the water. It was really deep, and they weren’t going to let me do it for insurance reasons, and I just utterly pitched a fit and they let me do it once, and that’s the one that’s in the movie. But the underwater stuff was actually done in Miami. They flew me out at 3:00 in the morning just because they needed clear water and because Charleston does not have clear water that you can see through. So I’m in Miami at like 4:30 in the morning, diving down out in the middle of the ocean, actually. It wasn’t even by the shore. They drove us way out there near this lighthouse that was out in the middle of nowhere in the water, and that was kind of weird and scary, but it was fun.

IH: Do you surf as well?

CT: A little bit, yeah. I had to learn it for the film. I still surf a little bit, but the water is too cold out here. I like to go where it’s bathwater. I’m from Florida. I’m spoiled. The water is entirely too cold here, and there’s big sharks.

IH: So all the surfing scenes are you?

CT: Yes, they did film stuff with other people, but I don’t think they used any in the movie. I think most of it is me.

IH: Some of your most poignant scenes were the ones with Richard Jenkins. What was your relationship with him?

CT: He’s fantastic. You can tap him for anything. He can come off the bench and do a drama, a comedy, and a character – a little small, weird character in a movie – and he will knock it out of the park every single time he steps up to the plate, and I think I really owe that hospital scene to him. We tried it a bunch of different ways and it was all good, but we tried it once just reading it. Actually, we talked about it. The reason why I wrote him the letter was because I couldn’t figure out how to tell him. So we read it like that, that I just had to read it because I couldn’t get it out any other way. And then, right at the end of the letter, his hand came up and it just destroyed me. It just ripped me open. There’s something about him and the nurturing way that he has with people in general — not just a young actor — that’s just heartbreaking. He just wants you to be good and wants you to be better and tries to help you as much as possible. Seeing a strong man and a strong personality so weak and caring and loving, and then having somebody just grab your head and say it’s okay with that emotion was enough to… It broke my heart.

IH: That coin — he gets it back. This thing is a museum piece and he’s throwing it in the dirt. I just don’t understand that at all. You might do that if you hated your father…

CT: We talked about that a lot. In the book, he sells the entire collection. He doesn’t keep anything, and I bucked on that hard. I was like, “He just sold his dad’s entire thing that he worked his entire life on? What?” And then we came up with saving that one thing, and I don’t think John cares about museum pieces. He’s not saying, “This coin cost $5,000 and I’m going to cherish it for life.” He’s saying, “This means my father, and it’s going to lead me through life. I’m going to let this help me go through life and have that connection with it and that sort of relationship with it that I didn’t have with my father, in a way.” That’s how I thought of it. He doesn’t want to keep it in a nice case where he doesn’t have a relationship with it. He wants it to be in his pocket with him. He didn’t treat it with such reverence as his father did.

IH: What’s your relationship with the book? As Nicholas pointed out in the adaptation, there are differences. Even in a slim volume, you have to make adaptations to make it work on screen. So do you ignore the book, or did you go to it to learn more about John that might not have been in the script?

CT: I read the book first. I was on really early. I’ve been with the film almost three to four years. I’d seen The Notebook and I knew it worked, and I’d seen other ones. My wife looks up to me at the exact moment every single time they pass away in the bed, and she makes me promise that we’re going to go the same way — just bawling tears, and it’s like a button, and there’s something that works in there. So the books are genius. He has a magic wand on the heart strings and it would be stupid to ignore the book, I think. Now, how do you translate that to your character or to a film? Totally different. You’ve got to figure that out, and that’s where it gets really convoluted and you can go really easily to the melodrama. Sometimes you need it, and sometimes you need to run away from it. So thank God we have a great director. [Laughs] I think Lasse is really the key to this film.

IH: You’ve made some very interesting career choices where you have what I think has to be considered a modest film in terms of the scale, in this case, and then you’ve just come off of a huge action event film, and you’ll go back and do another film with Dito Montiel [Son of No One] that might be back to guerrilla film-making style. Is there a plan here, or is there something that feeds you creatively to do those more modest films and then you’ll do another G.I. Joe in order to bankroll them?

CT: It’s generally the characters. I was terrified to do G.I. Joe. I had no idea how to do one of those movies. I was kind of scared. If one of those doesn’t work, it’s a huge hit on your career. If it doesn’t work, People are like, “Well he couldn’t make a $170 million movie work. I don’t want him in my film.” And those movies, in tone, are strange and I’d never done one before, and I just gave it up to Stephen (Sommers). But I like smaller films better, I think. I don’t know why. I think it’s the intimacy, and there’s not this avalanche. It is an avalanche, but it’s really small. Dito and I, when we’re running through the subways, trying to catch the subway just to get a shot real quick, and it’s just me and the DP and we just want to get a shot of me sitting on a subway bench but with the train going by and it’s not on the schedule, he just knows there’s a train over here and we just run over there and do that. It’s really fun. It’s really intimate, and you feel like you’re really doing it. But when you’re on a crazy-huge movie, they’re fun too, in their own way, but you have…I don’t even know. People come up to me and are like, “Yeah, I worked on Joe, and you’re like, “What? I’m sorry, man. I never met you. Hi,” because there are so many people working on it that it feels a little impersonal. But character is really where it starts and ends for me. I want to start doing different characters. I’ve played three soldiers now, and I think I’m done with the soldier thing for a while. I just played a Roman soldier, and it’s a different type of film so I’m excited about it. It’s The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s  1st century Kevin MacDonald and it’s kind of like The Searchers — two guys going into the unknown to try to find something and to find out what happened, but really they’re trying to fix parts of themselves. It’s a really beautiful relationship story.

IH: When is the last time you wrote or received a letter?

CT: I got a letter from a writer named Randall Wallace, and he wrote Braveheart. Braveheart is one of my favorite films and I have it framed. It’s one of my favorite things that I own. He’s like a mentor of mine now. That’s probably the last time I got a letter with a stamp and an actual [envelope]. It was really cool. But the last time I wrote a letter? I don’t know if I’ve ever written a letter really, and stamped it and sent it. I just don’t know if I’ve ever done it. I feel like I’ve done it when I was younger, like really, really young, but I think my mom probably helped me or something. I write stories now, or I’ll write little notes and leave them around the house and stuff to generate or whatever, but I don’t really think I’ve ever written her a love letter, like “let me count the ways” or anything like that. We do other little things…

IH: On the other side of it, have you ever gotten a “Dear John” letter?

CT: No, I think I’ve always been broken up with in person. I think I was in like 4th grade. I was boyfriend and girlfriend with this girl, or going together or whatever you want to call it, and then her friend yells out the window after I got off the bus, “Hey, so and so doesn’t want to date you or talk to you anymore,” or something, and you’re just like, “Okay. I’ll just move on.” That was the closest thing, I think, I’ve ever got to a “Dear John” letter.

IH: You mentioned working with Dito again. Is it a totally different kind of movie than Saints?

CT: It’s Saints-esque really. It’s like the grown-up Saints. Where Saints focused in on the kids, it’ll be flip-flopped. It’ll be kind of focused on adults this time, with kids as well. That guy has lived a crazy life and he’s known a lot of crazy people, and it’s a true story, or pieces of it, and it’ll be insane – DeNiro, Ray Liotta…I don’t know if Terrence Howard is going to be in it, I think he might, and a bunch of other people with some really strong personalities coming in. It’s like a psycho cop sort of New York thriller, and it’ll be Dito-esque again. We just tried to go and do something fun, and then this is him going back and swinging for the fence again into his crazy mind. It’s an independent film, so he’ll be allowed to do whatever he wants. [Laughs]

IH: What’s the greatest thing about being married?

CT: I like to sing it. It’s great. Nothing has really changed in our relationship. I think we did it really smart. I lived with her for like four and a half years before we got married, and nothing has changed yet. We’ll see when kids come. We’re not expecting them anytime soon or anything, but I don’t think anything has changed. I think the divorce rate is over 50% for a reason. I don’t think people are taking enough time now to really see if they can make it work and live together. I know that religion and stuff doesn’t let you live together and stuff, so that can get in the way sometimes because of tradition, but I feel like we did it really right. I just love being married. It’s nice. I like the ring. It’s cool.