Interview

TATUM: If I’d known you could shoot, then I wouldn’t have pulled that prank on you when we were filming in Prague . . .

WAYANS: I want us to keep our female audience, so I won’t talk about the prank that we played on each other when we were filming G.I. Joe . . . But I do actually have a question for you: How did our first assistant director’s car tire wind up in my dressing room? What happened?

TATUM: You were in your trailer that day. We had to do the snow scene, and we did it with about eight million pounds of salt—like, rock salt. And I kept filling his pockets up with salt when he wasn’t looking, so every time he turned around, he’d have an entire pocketful of salt. Finally, he was so pissed off that he buttoned up his pockets. But even when he unbuttoned them real quick, I’d fill them back up somehow. He didn’t know how I did it. He eventually had a trailer full of salt. So then we decided to fill his car with porn. He left his windows cracked, so we put maybe six or seven books of, like . . . I mean, like, thousands of pages of porn. And then we stole a tire so he couldn’t drive home.

WAYANS: And that was game over. [Tatum laughs] So, on the subject of G.I. Joe, you were the only guy on that movie who actually wanted to do all of his own stunts. At one point, you wanted to run into a burning building. Why would you want to do that?

TATUM: I wanted to be able to tell my grandkids one day, “Hey, your grandpa ran into a burning building and survived.”

WAYANS: The things is, you won’t have grandkids if you get burnt up in a building . . . I was, like, 50 yards away, and I could feel the gel in my hair
frizzle up. When we make the next G.I. Joe movie, I’ll paint you black—you can do all of my stunts.

TATUM: Only if I can paint you white, so you can do all my comedy . . . But I really like doing action. It’s one of those things where I negotiate the world physically, I think, more than mentally. You could call me a meathead or whatever, but I just do. I enjoy running and jumping.

WAYANS: Well, you are physically gifted. I mean, I’ve seen you do flips and
things . . . You’re like Spider-Man without the costume on. You climbed out my window once, and I was like, “This boy is half monkey.” [Tatum laughs] Have you ever gotten hurt on a film?

TATUM: When we were doing Fighting, I broke my nose and had a concussion. In the middle of the scene, this guy literally pushed my nose back into place with two spoons. He was just like, “Don’t worry about it.” And I was like, “What?” He had a bucket of ice and two metal spoons . . .

WAYANS: You had a good ol’ ghetto doctor. That’s the way my dad used to fix my broken stuff. You also got to do a movie with Michael Mann, PublicEnemies, which I’m extremely jealous about . . .

TATUM: That was absolutely nuts. Essentially, for me, it was kind of like having an extra’s part. I flew in for one day, and it was like the length of a commercial shoot. All I did was run from Christian Bale in an orchard all day—I played Pretty Boy Floyd and Christian’s character kills me. The scene kind of introduces Christian Bale’s character, Purvis, who is, like, the head honcho in the FBI. Johnny Depp is in the film, too.

WAYANS: That’s good company. Did Christian Bale yell at you at all?

TATUM: Nothing that wasn’t either merited or scripted. [laughs]

WAYANS: Well, I hope you do more action movies, but I would love to see you do a comedy.

TATUM: Only if it’s with you. I’m not a comedian.I can play off of people, but I’m not that guy.I don’t want people being like, “Yeah, he should have stuck with drama . . .” It would not be my choice to have critics mumbling that.

WAYANS: Is there any actor whose career really inspires you?

TATUM: Man, there are so many dramatic actors where I would give all of my anything to have their careers, but I don’t think I can try to follow anyone. I mean, if you look at any of the greats, from people like Paul Newman and Robert Redford to, you know, Brad Pitt—to get any of the kinds of roles like the ones that they’ve gotten, or just to be a part of any of the kinds of movies they’ve made, would be the end-all for me.