IN THE PRESS: Channing Tatum Covers February 2010 Details Magazine

Channing Tatum’s favorite actors may be Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman, but I think he’s definitely channeling a little James Dean in his newest cover shoot for the February issue of Details, which hits stands January 19th.

Fan’s can check out Chan in all his gorgeousness in the photos and video from the Details photo shoot on today’s post in the CTU Photo Gallery, but you should keep reading if you want to get all the juicy details about Chan’s life in his latest interview…

I got my first look at Chan’s new cover and photos for Details at the ‘Dear John‘ press junket this weekend when Chan’s publicist came into his suite to show it to him for the first time. As all of us in the room were complimenting Chan on the hot new shoot, I got to hear the set injury story you’re about to read first hand from the man himself. And for the record, all photos of said incident had thankfully been removed from his phone at that point.

Keep reading if you want to know what I’m talking about…

Channing Tatum Is Proud of His Package

What bothers a tough-as-nails action hero? That he can’t find a good spot in L.A. to shake his moneymaker.
By Craig Marks, Photographs by Norman Jean Roy

Channing Tatum’s penis is gross. It looks like a hot dog that’s been left too long on the grill. The tip is hot-pink, singed, and shriveled. It appears angry. And it’s painful to view. My penis hurts just from looking at it. Movie stars tend to be vain, by nature and profession, but Chan—that’s what everyone calls him—does not mind one bit showing me his sad, withered wiener.

“It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life,” he says, flipping through photos on his iPhone until he lands on a grainy snapshot of a scorched member. His scorched member. “I’m good . . . now,” he says with a grin. “Now my penis is fantastic! One hundred percent recovered. Put me back in the game, Coach.” Tatum’s no nancy boy: When not on set, the former high-school-football standout, who did all his own stunts in a movie aptly titled Fighting, spends most of his time in his basement gym, engaged in ball-bruising mixed-martial-arts workouts. “I’ve been to the hospital, gotten stitches, had broken fingers and toes. But this was a suffocating kind of pain.”

We’re seated at a picnic table on the slate patio of Tatum’s cozy Laurel Canyon home, drinking beers near the pool as the sun drops behind the Hollywood Hills. The famously chiseled star of the 2006 dancesploitation sleeper hit Step Up and ’09’s boyhoodmemorysploitation blockbuster G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is happily lugging around some extra pounds between films. “There’s this YouTube thing called ‘Channing Tatum Got Fat’ that has the whole spectrum of me, from model-skinny”—he Zoolandered for Abercrombie & Fitch and the Gap, among others, before breaking into movies—”to my actor weight.” When I ask him what he currently weighs, Tatum responds by patting his tummy: “I’m about 20 pounds more than you—around 200. I either have to gain 30 pounds or lose 30 pounds for my next role. I haven’t decided which yet.” But he knows well that no one’s gonna drop 11 bucks to see a doughy Channing Tatum. A stud can dream, though: “I’m gonna give it five more years and then say, ‘Get me some fat roles, boys!’”

Sporting sleepy eyes, camouflage cargo shorts, a wicked case of bed head, and a can of Coors Light, Tatum has the chilled bearing of a frat boy the day after the big kegger. On film and in person, he carries his pinup looks and guy’s-guy brawn with real lightness and humility—and that’s the essence of his appeal. Tatum is a fitting action hero for our downsized times: modest, decent, able-bodied. His house, the first he’s ever owned, is situated on a small cul-de-sac, perched on a mountainside, cocooned by trees, and walled all around, but the effect is much less paparazzi-proof fortress—”Trust me, no one is waiting outside to take my picture,” he says—than honeycomb hideout, a $2.6 million tree house for the 29-year-old Tatum; his wife, Step Up costar Jenna Dewan; and their two dogs, Lulu and Meeka.

Inside, the place is warm, comfy, and sparingly furnished; unpacked boxes still line the hardwood floors of the upstairs bedroom. “We’re both away so much,” he says with a sigh. Downstairs, the small living room is unremarkable—a wall-mounted flat-screen, a dog-friendly sectional sofa, some vaguely Moroccan brass-angel knickknacks—save for a large, gushingly romantic Technicolor painting of the couple hanging above the stairwell. In it, Tatum and Dewan are bare-shouldered, staring deep into each other’s eyes from inside the outline of a heart. “That was a wedding gift,” he says admiringly, commissioned by a friend whose occupation Tatum describes as “life coach.”

Back outside, Tatum walks past the Jacuzzi down to a gas fireplace. He turns a knob, then pokes at a log pile to get the blaze going. Lulu, chew toy in mouth, has assumed her spot on the picnic bench. Tatum says he loves that when he wanders out here at night, it’s so secluded and peaceful he could almost be back home down South. Almost. He leans over, reaches into a plastic cooler, and grabs another Coors Light. “This is only out here because me and Jenna just had family and friends over for Thanksgiving,” he explains. “I don’t want people to think I’m a bigger redneck than I already am.”

Tatum has recently returned from Scotland, where he was filming a Roman battle epic called The Eagle of the Ninth, directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland). The role is a familiar one: For the fourth time in his brief career, Tatum plays a soldier—this one from Rome’s legendary Ninth Legion. “It’s really a beautiful story of trust and honor and friendship,” he says. He nods thoughtfully, then lets out a laugh. “But I’ll never shoot a movie in Scotland again. Ever.”

Tatum was pretend-soldiering one raw, wet October day in the Scottish Highlands. The action required him to wade in ice-cold water, which, despite a high-tech wetsuit, could be withstood for only a few minutes. “The only way to keep warm was by pouring a mix of boiling water and river water down your suit. We were finally done shooting for the day, and one of the crew guys asks if I want to warm up before I go. I’m like, Nah, I’m good. And then I thought, Why not? Thing is, he’d forgotten to dilute the kettle water. So he poured scalding water down my suit. And I was trying to pull the suit away from my body to somehow get away from the boiling water, and the more I pulled the suit away, the lower the water went. It just went straight down and pretty much burned the skin off the head of my dick.”

Tatum was rushed to the nearest hospital—an hour away. Before long, the ice pack he was applying to the burn lost its chill. “I said to the driver, who was ex-special-forces Marines, ‘You might have to knock me out, because I don’t know if I can take the pain. Just grab something and hit me on the back of my head.’” Morphine finally KO’d the agony, and a team of doctors salved and bandaged his wound. “I had five guys looking at my shriveled, burned penis,” he says proudly.

Sure, plenty of dudes love to natter on about their junk, but it’s tough to imagine fellow superstars-in-the-making Shia LaBeouf and Ryan Gosling cheerfully sharing pictures of their gnarled rods with a reporter. Tatum is so unguarded it’s almost unnerving. He rhapsodizes about one day writing a “fantastical dansical.” When discussing the percentage of his films in which he’s appeared shirtless (that’d be 100), he momentarily offers prideful resistance—”In Stop-Loss, I only had it off once”—before helping with the count. “All the time in She’s the Man,” he says, blushing. “G.I. Joe, too. And all the early films.” I decide not to mention that the opening of the trailer for his upcoming romantic soldier drama Dear John shows Tatum bare-chested and dripping wet. How could I? While Tatum’s sucking down Silver Bullets from a cooler, he insists on dashing inside to beer me with higher-end brews.

“There’s no vanity with Chan,” says Amanda Seyfried, who plays his love interest in Dear John, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel. “That’s the first thing that struck me about him. I saw this intensely good-looking guy, and I expected some vanity. But he’s not like that at all. He’s not afraid to be embarrassed, not afraid to look stupid. One of the reasons he’s such a good actor is that he’s not afraid of anything.”

To be fair, the jury’s still out on how good an actor Channing Tatum really is, will be, or, in green-screen gunk like G.I. Joe, even needs to be. G.I. Joe may have certified Tatum as a box-office draw—it was his first $100 million earner—but his strongest performance to date came in his breakthrough role. In 2006’s outer-borough coming-of-age tale A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Tatum played a street tough named Antonio, a pained, charismatic, and brutish dead-ender who thinks only with his fists. The New York Times compared him to Brando; the film’s director, Dito Montiel, tosses out McQueen, Pacino, De Niro. “There’s something about Chan that feels normal,” says Montiel, a no-bullshit dems/dese/dose guy who has cast Tatum in all three of his films. “Most actors today live in a bubble. Chan’s a real guy. He’s had his ass kicked in real life, and done a little of that, too. That changes you.”

Tatum’s considerable onscreen presence is still mostly physical. “I’ve aways been good at picking up certain things, like sports and dancing,” he says. In his films, Tatum oozes a jock’s bulletproof confidence, but because real men don’t swagger, he often undercuts his virility with barn-size gestures of small-town goodness: unfailing manners, aw-shucks humility, courtliness toward women. Tatum calls Clint Eastwood his hero; he says he used to dream about writing a letter to him: “I’m sorry for all of us wimpy actors out there. Please teach me.” Not surprisingly, then, a Channing Tatum character usually isn’t much of a talker. He admits he tends to mumble his lines. “I had a bad stutter when I was really young,” he says. “I couldn’t get a sentence out. Like, ‘D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ad.’ And that turned into a mumble.”

Tatum’s father, himself a blue-chip athlete in high school, owned a roofing company until he fell and broke his back; after that, he traveled the South by car, peddling building supplies. The family moved from Alabama to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and finally to Tampa, Florida, where Chan lived out the script to a Very Special Degrassi High episode: excelling as captain of the football team, exchanging promise rings with the head cheerleader, and fending off thoughts about suicide, a side effect of medication he took to treat attention-deficit disorder.

“I was not good in school,” Tatum says. “I could never read very fast or very well. I got tested for learning disabilities, for dyslexia. Then I got put on Ritalin and Dexedrine. I took those starting in the eighth grade.” The pills worked, too, for a while. “As soon as they pumped that drug into me, it would focus me right in,” he exclaims. “I was doing great. I was getting A’s, doing extra-credit work!” He laughs, then asks if I need another beer. “But the longer I took the Dexedrine,” he continues, “the worse I felt. It sucked all the personality from me. I’d get depressed. I would think suicidal—I was never personally suicidal, but I could see how some kids were, how they’d be, like, I can’t take this anymore. Finally, my senior year, I said, ‘That’s it. I am done with these.’”

After spending a year at a small college in West Virginia on a football scholarship, he returned to Tampa, with no idea what he wanted to do. He bunked with his sister and worked a series of crap jobs: mortgage broker, telemarketer, house framer, record-store clerk, perfume spritzer in a department store. Hump it all day, then slap on the hair gel, guzzle a few, and cruise for trouble in the evenings. One afternoon, he heard a radio spot for a nightclub seeking dancers. Tatum liked to dance, so he turned up at the club to learn more.

“I remember meeting Chan that day,” says Adam Martingano, who also answered the ad. “We were standing upstairs there, trying to figure out if this was something we wanted to do.” Tatum and Martingano, now a software executive, have been best friends ever since that audition 10 years ago; Martingano was Tatum’s best man at his wedding last July, the two are partners in a production company, and they work out together daily at Tatum’s gym. Once you’ve done the bump ‘n’ grind in a thong next to another bethonged guy as part of a stripper revue called Male Encounter, your bond as BFFs is sealed.

“I’ve been wanting to talk about this forever!” swears Tatum. “You have publicists and managers saying no, and I’m like, Mmm-mmm, it’s gonna come out. I never wanted to hide it.” Last September, Usmagazine.com, under the banner CHANNING TATUM’S SECRET STRIPPER PAST, posted a 1999 video of Tatum—billed as “Chan Crawford”—front and center on a Tampa stage, hoofing like a Backstreet Boy in heat, snogging some bachelorette in the front row, then peeling off his shirt, and finally, like an NBA sixth man yanking off his warm-ups, discarding his pants. “Thaaaat’s right, ladies,” barked the club’s announcer. “Chan Crawford is here to pleeeease you!” Only a bulging jockstrap and a thin wall of dead presidents stood between the Sun Coast’s horniest housewives and Chan’s fantastic penis.

I think it’s hil-larious,” Tatum says convincingly. “I met some of the most insane characters.” He hopes to do for male stripping what Boogie Nights did for the golden age of Valley porn. “I’m gonna make a movie about it. I’ve talked to a couple of directors.” I ask Tatum if his handlers are happy about the prospect of his strapping on the ol’ banana hammock again. “I don’t care what they think,” he answers quickly. “I’m happy I did it. I’m not proud, because it’s not something to be proud of, but I had an experience that only one out of a thousand—a million—people can say they’ve ever had. I’ve been through this crazy sort of life, and I came out the other side fairly unscathed.”

TATUM’S WIFE IS CURLED UP on the living-rooom sofa, studying lines for a film she begins shooting tomorrow. Jenna Dewan is teacup petite, pretty and pie-sweet, a former Texas high-school cheerleader who, like Tatum, started in showbiz as a dancer, touring with Janet Jackson and Christina Aguilera. “I didn’t even hear you come home, babe,” he purrs. “I didn’t want to bother you guys,” she purrs back.

After dinner options are discussed and takeout menus unsuccessfully searched for, Tatum phones in for Italian. (They’ve memorized the menu.) While we wait for the food, Dewan has Tatum show me pictures of the two of them playing Band Hero in their living room. Asked to describe a typical evening for one of young Hollywood’s hottest couples, the Dewan-Tatums look at each other, nuzzle their dogs, point up to their flat-screen and launch into an impassioned and nuanced disquisition on the genius of Animal Planet’s Meerkat Manor.

Plenty of public couples feign the role of homebodies, hoping to burnish their celebrities-are-just-like-us cred, but Tatum and Dewan aren’t the sort of actors who can fake the part this convincingly. Tatum’s no fool: He likes his life, enjoys the hillside home, the pool, the Escalade, the seven-figure, name-above-the-title leading roles. But he’ll tell you without prodding that he doesn’t much like living in Los Angeles. It’s a necessary evil. He’s moved his parents an hour south of here, and that helps some, but still, he may be the one person who, given the choice, would rather be in Tampa.

“L.A. sucks for going out,” he spits, and for the first time I get a taste of the spring-loaded rage he brings to his best work. “Everything here is a ‘lounge.’ Everyone just sits around at a table, drinking a cocktail, looking at each other. There are no dance clubs. Back in Florida, I’m gonna go into a club, get drunk, get sweaty, dance, have a good time, and get a taxi home. There’s no place here that does dancing like that.” He rises, offers me a final beer from the fridge, then sits back down alongside Dewan. “I miss it, man. I miss it.”

As I mentioned before, fans can go to the CTU Photo Gallery to check out all of the photos and tons of outtakes from Chan’s new Details photo shoots and you can even watch a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot below…

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VIDEO OF THE WEEK: Channing Tatum in ‘The Trap’

Today’s Video of the Week is Channing Tatum’s 2007 movie ‘The Trap‘. The film was created for the 2007 Glamour Reel Moments short film series, was directed by Tom Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson, and stars Jeanne Tripplehorn, Aisha Tyler, Camilla Belle, Gia Carides, Johanna Day, and Greg Butler.

It tells the story of a middle-aged woman named Maggie (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) stuck in a rut and afraid to take risks, until one day, she does. Maggie’s journey of self-discovery begins with a shaky start when she pulls up to an address in a seedy part of town. But after an unforgettable night of opening up to unexpected possibilities, her life will never be the same again.

Ironically, the DVD for this movie released via Clinique makeup counters when I visited Chan on the New York set of his film ‘Fighting’. He hadn’t seen it yet, and I had just picked up my copy the day before, so he watched it on his laptop in the set trailer. My claim to fame is that I showed him his own movie for the very first time. I know. I’m completely lame, but it was still pretty cool.

Without further ado, ‘The Trap‘…

Glamour Reel Moments is an award-winning short film series inspired by essays written by Glamour magazine’s readers, who dramatized their real-life moments. The goal of Glamour Reel Moments is to create new opportunities for women to get behind the camera and direct a short film for the first time.

The 2007 series included short films by first-time directors Rita Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, and Kate Hudson, and in addition to Channing Tatum, stars top talent such as Jeanne Tripplehorn, Winona Ryder, Chevy Chase, Dakota Fanning, Virginia Madsen, and Kurt Russell.

Thanks to @JolindaDanielle for asking about the film, thus giving me the idea for this post!

If you have a favorite video that you would like me to consider, send a link to the video to votw@channingtatumunwrapped.com and tell me why you like it. I will post it and your explanation on the blog.

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IN THE PRESS: Channing Tatum’s First Major Cover…August 2009 Issue of GQ Magazine!!!

You all may or may not recall some photos I posted in the gallery that showed Channing Tatum jogging through West Hollywood last May.

That little jaunt through the streets of Los Angeles was one piece of Chan’s grueling workout schedule and strict diet to get in shape for his very first major magazine cover.

In what I call the “Return of the Six Pack” photo shoot, famed photographer Mario Testino allowed Chan to show off many of his assets and all of his hard work with the Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica, California as a backdrop, to the delight of fans far and wide. Chan was captured cavorting around the halls of the hotel, and in the breathtaking Suite 700 — a Hollywood playground featuring two bedrooms and a wrap-around terrace with one of “the best views in the world,” according to a long list of travel magazines.

I’ve actually known about this particular piece of news for a really long time, and it was killing me because I couldn’t say anything until GQ made the official announcement.

One thing you won’t learn in the interview below is that, soon after finishing the shoot, Chan threw a small pool party with his close friends to celebrate and scarfed down a ton of chocolate cupcakes as an extra reward to himself, ending his strict chicken, broccoli, and brown rice diet with a bang!!

If the new photos are not enough reason to pickup the August 2009 issue of GQ when it hits newsstands, then here’s a couple more…

In the revealing article, we get a rare glimpse of Chan in his favorite place in the world (back home with his family in Wetumpka, Alabama) and even learn for the first time who he voted for in the election. It’s a really interesting read, very honest and 100% Chan (chiseled abs and all). I hope you enjoy it! Without further ado, Chan’s new GQ article…

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CHANNING TATUM WON THE LOTTERY

{And here’s how}
At 18, washed out of college in West Virginia and ended up in South Beach.
Worked in construction and as a perfume spritzer at Dillard’s.
Walked into a modeling agency and got a job with Abercrombie.
Went to Hollywood.
Stayed handsome.
Landed a bunch of roles—two, oddly, with the name of “Duke.”
Is now being called the next big thing.
Is not complaining

by Lisa DePaulo

“Hey, it’s Chan. I’m at the bar.”

I’m not expecting a cell-phone message from Channing Tatum when I land in Montgomery, Alabama, on a sweet day in June. The plan was to hook up at his uncle Bruce’s ranch, forty-five minutes from the airport, each of us arriving separately. But Chan (“Nobody calls me Channing”), being at that stage of celebrity when he doesn’t mind spending time with a reporter, has taken it upon himself to redo the plans his publicist made. Even if that means sitting in the Montgomery airport, where he has flown from L.A., an extra hour until my flight gets in from New York City. “I hope it’s okay that I canceled your car so you can ride with me,” he says. “There’s only one bar in the airport, so you should be able to find me.”

That’s easy. He’s the only person there. Well, aside from the bartender and a lovely woman in her forties with one arm who, much to his embarrassment, has just paid for his fourth Coors Light. (It is close to five o’clock Alabama time.) “Aw, man, you shouldn’t have done that,” says Chan, going over to her table, where she is sitting alone with her Subway sandwich. “But, um, thanks.” It’s hard to tell whether she knows he’s somebody or just thinks he’s cute. He has her all shy and giggling, though.
His driver, from Touch of Class limo service, is waiting by the door. “This is Thomas,” says Chan. Thomas, who’s decked out in a pressed black suit and cap befitting the royal guard, and who speaks with a proper Scottish accent, tips his hat. “He just moved here from Scotland,” says Chan, clearly impressed.

“It’s quite…different,” says Thomas.
Chan slouches down in the backseat of the black town car. He has an iPhone in his hand and a Kindle poking out of his bag.
What are you reading?

“I got two books on this thing,” he says, “about the start and finish of the Roman Empire. I don’t have to read this stuff, but I love it.” (It’s in preparation, he says, for a role.) He’s wearing the standard young-guy-in-Hollywood uniform—ripped jeans hanging off his butt, sideways baseball hat, cotton button-down shirt—which, oddly, also turns out to be pretty close to the standard young-guy-in-rural-Alabama uniform. “You ready to get all country?” he asks.

We’re headed thirty-three miles northeast, to what Chan calls his “favorite place on the planet, by far”: his uncle Bruce’s ranch. Three hundred acres in the middle of nowhere. Wetumpka, to be precise. It’s where his mama was raised. And though his formative years were spent in Tampa, Wetumpka is what Channing Tatum calls home. He escapes here every chance he gets, and that’s not bullshit. “ ’Cause it’s real, you know? You’ll see.” But first, he needs to “take a pee” and pick up a couple of six-packs for his uncle Bruce. Thomas steers the town car into a Citgo station with a minimart. While Chan is in the loo, a few truckers buying chew at the cash register size up his ride. “Good-lookin’ black car sittin’ there,” says one. “Is that there yer limo-zeen?” says the other.

Not mine, I say. It’s Channing Tatum’s.

“Hmmph. We don’t see a whole lotta those round here. Who’d you say that was?”
Channing Tatum. He’s an actor.
Blank stares.
You ever see A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints? Or…Step Up?
Blank stares.
He’s gonna be in G.I. Joe this summer.
Ah, okay, him they’ve heard of.

Chan comes out of the restroom, gives a wave to the truckers, and tosses a couple of six-packs of Bud into the backseat, and we take off. He rolls down the window, sticks his head out. “I love the smell of country.” He turns to me. “It’s just one of those really quiet places,” he says, “and there’s real folks here. Just, you know, real people. We’re probably gonna shoot some guns when we get to Uncle Bruce’s. You ever shoot before?”

***

A FEW MILES LATER, we pull up to the ranch. It is some gorgeous country. “That’s his house over there,” says Chan, pointing to a log cabin in the distance. “And that used to be my nanny’s house.” (He means nanny as in grandmother.) “And that porch right there was, like, my childhood. And that pond was where I used to fish with my nanny, right there. We used to fish with liver as bait.”
We’re heading down a long gravelly dirt road. “Just pull up next to the shed,” Chan tells Thomas. It’s like a big open barn, a former tractor shed with an outdoor kitchen, a stone fireplace, and a stage for when the wagon trains come through and they have a little entertainment. Bruce is waiting by a smoker made from an old propane tank, where he has six chickens roasting for dinner. Aunt Dot is at the outdoor stove whipping up corn bread and peach cobbler. Twenty-four of Channing Tatum’s relatives—including Denver the fireman and Dustin the professional bull rider—are due here any minute. But that’s not unusual. Most of these relatives live on the ranch; the rest are a stone’s throw away.

“Boy!” says Uncle Bruce, when he spots his nephew. They hug like they both just got out of prison.
“This is Uncle Bruce,” Chan says proudly.
“How you doin’, son?” says Bruce.
“Doin’ good. How you doin’, sir?”

From behind us, a noise. “Ahem.” It’s Thomas, who’s still here. Standing at attention next to the smoker, with Chan’s bags hanging from one arm and mine from the other. “Sorry, mate,” says Chan, pressing some bills into Thomas’s hand.

“Thank you, sir,” says Thomas.
“Come on, Bruce, let’s show her the house,” says Chan.

Bruce goes to get the Polaris, a funky little ranger that they tool around the ranch on when they’re not using the four-wheeler. “We don’t want the lady havin’ to walk too far.” On the way here, Chan had described Uncle Bruce as the rock of his life, the definition of decency. He told me how Uncle Bruce fell off his horse and broke his neck in three places (“Just like Christopher Reeve,” Bruce says) but recovered enough to still do the buck dance. He’s a rugged-looking 65-year-old with a white handlebar mustache, dressed in tight Levi’s, a studded belt, and a Wrangler shirt with iron horse ranch, the name of his spread, embroidered on the front.

Bruce pulls the Polaris up and hops off. He tells Chan to chill for a minute. Gotta check on the chickens first.

“Aw, man,” says Chan as Bruce lifts the lid off the smoker. “That smells good!”
“Darn right,” says Uncle Bruce.

A few minutes later, we drive off to Uncle Bruce’s cabin. “He built it himself,” says Chan, “and I’m a-gonna build mine right about there.” He points to a little spot under the trees. (About the thickening accent: He’d warned me that he slips into country talk within minutes of being with his family.)

“That’s right,” says Bruce. “We gonna build him a little cabin, right there, overlookin’ the pond.”
“Nothin’ big,” says Chan.
“Just enough for him and Jenna to come and relax, and for Jenna’s folks to visit. Ride horses, four-wheelers…”

Bruce already has the plans drawn up for Chan’s cabin; it’s going to be part of his wedding present to his nephew. (In July, Channing is going to marry his girlfriend, Jenna Dewan, whom he met when they co-starred in Step Up.) Bruce thinks it’ll be good, as he gets more and more famous, to have a place to go, away from the phonies. Where he’ll always be protected. “Ain’t nobody gonna mess with nobody up here,” Bruce says. But these days, when Chan visits, he sleeps in Uncle Bruce’s second bedroom or the bunkhouse, where there’s a trough that has been refashioned into a tub. “It’s bigger than the tub at the Soho Grand,” Chan says.

“The who?” says Uncle Bruce.
We’re on the porch of the cabin now. “You come right in and make yourself at home,” Bruce says. “Don’t let that buffalo scare ya.”
Wait. Is that…?
“Yup, killed ’em all myself,” he says, referring to the buffalo, the two bucks, and the turkey stuffed and mounted on his living room wall. “I have a motto: You don’t kill anything you ain’t gonna eat.”
And the chickens we’re having tonight?
“Oh, Dot got those at the Winn-Dixie.”
Whew.

“I remember when you killed your first deer up here,” Uncle Bruce says to Chan. And to me: “He was wild as a buck.” Chan, he means, not the deer. “He’d take off running. Three hundred acres here and he can run them all.” He says he never thought Chan would go off and be a movie star—he was a restless kid with dyslexia and ADD who did lousy in school—but he’s not worried about him turning into one of those Hollywood phonies. “That’s all I told him when he got into this: ‘Don’t forget your roots, son.’ ”

***

THE WEEK BEFORE, Channing Tatum strolls into the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood in a lush Armani sweater and sunglasses. Heads turn. He’s that good-looking. He’s on some nutty diet to look extrabuff for a photo shoot, so he sits at the poolside restaurant and orders…a water. “I have a special meal plan that I’m on,” he says. “It’s pretty much just chicken and broccoli and brown rice. Four times a day. And egg whites.” All this for a photo shoot? “Just to get lean. I got a job coming up, too, that I’m starting in August, that I’m starting to train for. It’s called The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s a Kevin Macdonald film. He did The Last King of Scotland.”

He has gorgeous green eyes.

“Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you so much, ma’am,” he says, as though he never heard such a thing before. “That was really sweet.” Every once in a while, you meet a guy like Channing Tatum, a kid on the cusp of stardom who seems so decent, humble even, that you hope Uncle Bruce is right and that he won’t turn into a jerk.

And he might not. When I ask him, for example, to tell me the story of his life, he shrugs and says, “I got crazy lucky. Like, sometimes I think I won the lottery or something.” He pauses, takes a look at the crowd at the Sunset Marquis—the usual smattering of agents and celebs. (This is a guy who will later admit that his favorite restaurant is Cracker Barrel.) “At times it feels like the bottom’s gonna fall out. Just ’cause I don’t really know how I got here. But I just keep moving forward, and it just keeps getting better and better.”

He has three movies coming out in the next eight months. He’s about to marry a woman he calls, in all earnestness, “the love of my life.” And the best part? He doesn’t have to spritz perfume at the Tommy Hilfiger counter at Dillard’s anymore—which, aside from dancing at a club in Tampa, was his last real job before making it big.

He’s 29. A part Native American son of a roofer who fell through a roof, broke his back, and ended up a traveling salesman, and of a mother who never doubted him. “If it wasn’t for her literally doing my homework for me, I would not have even graduated high school. Guaranteed.” Ten years ago, he was an unemployed college dropout. He had been good enough at football to land a partial scholarship to Wake Forest. But shortly before freshman year started, he got called with the bad news: Though he tested high, his grades weren’t good enough. So he ended up taking a scholarship at Glenville State in West Virginia. “A tiny little school,” he says. “You know, small small town. I liked the people and the players and stuff, but I got there and I was like, this is not what I wanted. The reality started to sink in about, you know, doing football as a job.” He lasted one year. Went home to Tampa and got a job framing houses, “pounding nails in the sun,” for $7.75 an hour. Then one night, out drinking, a buddy told him that Dillard’s was hiring at the perfume counter for $10 an hour. “I was like, $10 to sit in an air-conditioned place and spray cologne on a piece of paper? Yeah, I’m gonna do that.”

He got fired from the perfume counter—“Actually, I quit the day they were going to fire me”—for breaking into dances in the department store. And he went to work in a Tampa club, where he actually got paid to dance. Then he quit that, too, deciding to take his shot in the land of opportunity: South Beach. His first week there, as he wandered around looking for a job, “a creepy old man” stopped him on the street and told him he could be a model. Told him he could make $1,500 a day. Told him that all he had to do was…come back to his apartment.

Chan took off in the other direction. But when he got to his dumpy rental, he thought about what the guy had said. Maybe he could be a model. The next day, he walked into a modeling agency and got hired. Soon he was doing soda commercials (Mountain Dew and Pepsi); then he got picked up as a face (and body) of Abercrombie & Fitch. Then Armani. Back in Wetumpka, no one knew what to make of this, but they were darn proud. He was making real money. But he didn’t want to be a model for the rest of his life. So, of course, he moved to L.A. to be an actor.

And the next lucky thing happened: He was good at it.

But he also worked his ass off to get here. “My mom always said, ‘Luck is nothing but preparation and opportunity.’ ” In a week, he’s going to start training with a mixed-martial-arts instructor for his next role (though he’s already a black belt), and he’ll keep reading about the Roman Empire. “I think because I’ve had that history of not really being great in school, I probably try to overcompensate. That’s why I try to read so many books. Just so I don’t feel…uneducated.”

The producer Lauren Shuler Donner, who lobbied to have Tatum cast in one of his first roles (the romantic comedy She’s the Man), saw the quality in him that she thinks “all our big superstars have: an unpredictableness. Like Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson. There’s an unpredictableness inside that makes them mesmerizing to us, and Chan has that.”

In his few years in Hollywood, Tatum has managed to star in a broad range of films, some of which (like A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) were a hit with the critics, if not the box offce. Others, like Step Up and Coach Carter, were what he calls “tweeners—you know, those midlevel-budget movies that just kinda do good.” But he is fully aware that the pressure is on with G.I. Joe. “This is, like, my first step out into the whole commercial realm,” he says. “I hope it does okay.” (But the early reviews are dismal. Even his co-star, Sienna Miller, who adores Channing, admits that, “you know, G.I. Joe, it’s not going to be the best acting work we’ve ever done.”)

Halfway through our dinner, I persuade him to eat something, so he orders a piece of chicken. “Just plain,” he tells the waiter. “No seasoning, nothing.” Don’t worry, he assures me, “I’ll eat like a real person when we get to Alabama. We’re gonna have so much fun. You wanna pull out all the stops?” Um, okay. “You don’t want to get on a bull, do you?” Um, sure. “You want to get on a bull?” The agent at the next table does a double take. “No, you don’t want to get on a bull. You might get hurt. But we’ll do it up big, and you’ll see a totally different side of me. I talk different, I walk different, everything. I don’t have one single bad memory to where I’m gonna take you. Not one. It was my sanctuary. I hated school, wasn’t good in school, and me and my dad butted heads about that. But nothing mattered when I went home to Alabama.”

He wants to tell me more, but his publicist has arrived and he needs to go get fitted for his cover shoot tomorrow. “All I had was chicken!” he tells her.

***

BACK AT THE RANCH, Chan is insisting I get on the back of the four-wheeler so he can drive me out to the edges of the property. “Just hold on,” he instructs, wrapping my arms around his waist and tearing off through the woods. It’s bloody terrifying, particularly when we end up in a muddy ditch far from the shed and he can’t get the thing started up again. The sun is setting. We’re stuck. My cell phone doesn’t work. I’m thinking the bull might have been a better option. “We’re not gonna die here,” says Chan. “You gotta calm down. You never been in the country before, have you?” He pushes it out of the ditch and gets it started again. “Toldja.”

Back at the shed, his family is discussing the upcoming wedding. Chan has invited every relative who is here tonight to come to Malibu in July. They are all flying out on the same commercial flight. A couple of his cousins took extra jobs to save up. Almost none of his relatives have been to L.A. before, and there is much angst over what to wear. “Wear whatever you want,” says Chan. “Wear jeans if you want.”
“It says cocktail attire on the invitation,” says his cousin Sheryl, Bruce’s daughter, who works on political campaigns in Alabama. A few other cousins have been trying on gowns, and the men are contemplating going to that place down in Montgomery that rents tuxedos. “Really,” says Chan, “don’t go renting tuxedos.”

“I think Daddy should wear a tuxedo,” says Sheryl.
“I ain’t wearing no tuxedo,” says Bruce. “I’m wearing my black jeans and black hat.”
“Perfect,” says Chan. “If Uncle Bruce don’t do the stanky leg and the buck dance at my wedding, I’m gonna be pissed off.”

Sheryl rolls her eyes and says to me, “I just don’t want us showin’ up like the Clampetts, you know? I mean, my daddy never even seen a homosexual before.”

A little smile from Chan, who quickly changes the subject to bull riding. He wants me to sit down next to Dustin’s buddy Sid, who made him get on his first bull. “Ask him how he lost his finger,” says Chan, and Sid mimes picking his nose—a booger bit it off—and…booger jokes ensue. Everyone is laughing hysterically. As the sky goes black, the family is gathered around in a circle, in folding chairs, with Dot and Bruce sitting on the swing in the middle of the shed, rocking and holding hands. Chan takes turns bouncing various kids in his lap. Another case of Bud is pulled out of the fridge. A few of his cousins tell him they just went to the movie theater to see him in Fighting and didn’t much care for all the gore. Then someone brings up politics.

“Do not say you voted for Barack Obama,” says his cousin Sheryl.
“I voted for Barack Obama,” says Chan.
“Don’t you go saying that around here,” says Sheryl. “You’ll be like everybody else out there.” She means in Hollywood. “Nobody around here wants to hear that you voted for O-ba-ma.”
“But I did,” says Chan.
“Well, then, shush,” says Sheryl. “You gotta have respect for the people who live here.”
“I don’t care. If they don’t like me because I voted for Obama, then fuck them. I like horses and I like Obama. Nothin’ wrong with that.”

It’s getting late. Close to midnight. Chan has promised to drive me back to my digs at the Drury Inn & Suites. “That is a beautiful hotel,” says Sheryl. “It’s seven stories.” But Chan, who’s had “a few too many beers,” is worried about driving, so he asks Uncle Bruce, who’s sober as a stick, to deliver me back to Montgomery.

Uncle Bruce obliges. An enormous pickup truck (the kind with six wheels) is pulled up to the shed. He and Aunt Dot get in the front seat, and Chan and I sit in the back.

“You really live in New York City?” asks Uncle Bruce as we head down the highway. “I been there.” It was around 1957, he says, and he and his mama went to visit his aunt Merle. On the train. Days and days on the train. And when they arrived, “I was like, Shee-it. There were all these fellas laying on the street. I said, ‘Whatcha all, dead? Are they all dead?’ And somebody says, ‘No, they ain’t dead, they homeless.’ ” Aunt Dot laughs; she’s heard this story before. “And I says, ‘Well, then, get ’em homes!’ You still got that up there in New York?”

We pull up to the Drury Inn & Suites, next to Sam’s Club. Chan insists on walking me in. At the counter, he says good-bye.

“You see why I love it here, right?”
I do.

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Here’s a behind-the-scenes video from the photo shoot…

Congrats to Chan on scoring the cover and thanks to GQ for sending me the high quality photos and the new article. The August 2009 issue of GQ will hit New York and Los Angeles newsstands on July 14th and will have a wide release on July 21st, so make sure to get your copy!

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UPDATE: You can see the article scans in the slideshow below or you can CLICK HERE to view the high quality scans up-close. Enjoy!

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NEWS FLASH: Download Channing Tatum’s Movie ‘The Trap’ on iTunes for FREE!!!

I wanted to let everyone know that Channing Tatum’s 2007 short film, ‘The Trap‘, is now available for free at the iTunes Store. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can click here to download the movie. You can download iTunes for free if you don’t have it yet.

In case you don’t know, ‘The Trap‘ was created for last year’s Glamour Reel Moments short film series and was directed by Tom Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson. The film stars also Jeanne Tripplehorn, Aisha Tyler, Camilla Belle, Gia Carides, Johanna Day, and Greg Butler and tells the story of a woman who finds happiness in trying something new.

Glamour Reel Moments is an award-winning short film series inspired by essays written by Glamour magazine’s readers, who dramatized their real-life moments. The goal of Glamour Reel Moments is to create new opportunities for women to get behind the camera and direct a short film for the first time.

The 2007 series includes short films by first-time directors Rita Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, and Kate Hudson, and in addition to Channing Tatum, stars top talent such as Jeanne Tripplehorn, Winona Ryder, Chevy Chase, Dakota Fanning, Virginia Madsen, and Kurt Russell.

If you don’t use iTunes, but would like to see the movie, feel free to watch ‘The Trap’ on CTU.

Channing Tatum Video of the Week: Channing Tatum’s ‘The Trap’

Today’s Video of the Week is the full version of Channing Tatum’s newest movie ‘The Trap’ where he plays Greg, a trapeze instructor that helps the main character in the film get over her fear of the flying apparatus. Enjoy!

If you have a favorite video that you would like me to consider, send a link to the video to votw@channingtatumunwrapped.com and tell me why you like it. I will post it and your explanation on the blog.

REMINDER: Watch Channing Tatum in his Newest Film ‘The Trap’ at Clinique.com

This weekend (with the help of my best friend of more than 21 years and the initial reason for my current trip to New York) I was able to get a couple of copies of Channing Tatum’s new movie ‘The Trap’ where he plays a trapeze instructor named Greg that helps the main character of the short film quickly get over her deep fears of using the flying apparatus.

I needed my best friend Lis’s help, because you had to get a free consultation on October 13th or 14th at the Clinique makeup counter in order to get a copy of the free DVD.

Thankfully, her free consultation allowed me to get a second copy of the movie, so soon I will be giving away the DVD to one lucky CTU reader. I’ll let you know when that contest starts.

Luckily, you really don’t need the DVD to watch Chan’s newest movie, because fans around the world will be able to check out Channing in ‘The Trap’ at Clinique.com starting Monday October 15, 2007.

When you watch the movie, pay close attention to the male performing on the trapeze and then Chan’s speaking part shows up in the latter part of the movie. CLICK HERE to watch Channing’s new short film ‘The Trap’!!!

NEWS FLASH: Channing Tatum’s ‘The Trap’ Premieres at Glamour’s Star-Studded Event Promoting Women Directors

Glamour Reel Moments Presented by Clinique held the premiere of Channing Tatum’s newest movie ‘The Trap’ at the Directors Guild of America on October 9, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. In addition to Channing, the picture above shows Rita Wilson (the film’s director) and Jeanne Tripplehorn (the film’s lead actress) on the red carpet of the premiere. Due to his current filming schedule in New York City for his movie ‘Fighting’, Chan was sadly not able to attend the premiere.

To celebrate ‘The Trap’s premiere Glamour held a party at the Chateau Marmont after the screening which included mini cheeseburgers and bite-size pizza slices served in white boxes and DJ Michelle Pesci provided the music for the event.

Guests at the star-studded party included celebrities like Kirsten Dunst, Kate Hudson, Kurt Russell, Diane Warren, Rita Wilson’s husband, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Dennis Miller, Tobey Maguire, Laurie David, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chevy Chase.

Here is a summary about ‘The Trap’…

CHANNING TATUM’S ‘THE TRAP’

Directed By: Rita Wilson

Starring: Camilla Belle, Greg Butler, Gia Carides, Johanna Day, Ray Porter, Channing Tatum, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Aisha Tyler

Channing Tatum’s Character: Greg

What’s the movie about?: ‘The Trap’ is about a middle-aged woman named Maggie (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) stuck in a rut and afraid to take risks, until one day, she does. Maggie’s journey of self-discovery begins with a shaky start when she pulls up to an address in a seedy part of town. But after an unforgettable night of opening up to unexpected possibilities, her life will never be the same again.

In addition to directing the film, Rita Wilson also shows off her vocal chops in ‘The Trap’. Wilson sings “Lessons Learned” during the film’s closing credits, a song written by über-hitmaker Diane Warren.

You can use the MP3 player below to listen to the movie’s theme song:

Don’t forget that ‘The Trap’ will be available on DVD for a limited time at Clinique counters all over the US October 13 and 14 (this Saturday and Sunday).

Click on the images below to go to the GlamourReelMoments.com and Clinique.com sites where we all will be able to view Channing’s movie ‘The Trap’ on Monday October 15, 2008:

You can now also watch ‘The Trap’ below:

If you like the song “Lessons Learned”, you can go to the sites above to download a free copy and Glamour will donate $1 to Big Brothers Big Sisters (Up to $10,000).

Source: EOnline.com

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