The one role Channing Tatum wants to delete from history: “I fucking hate that movie”
Navigating a career as a rising star pegged for the very top can be a tricky thing for an actor, which ended up with Channing Tatum essentially being forced into a role he never wanted to play, so it’s no surprise he ended up hating the end result with such intense disdain.
Initially coming to prominence with 2006’s dance drama Step Up and its sequel Step Up 2: The Streets two years later, Tatum quickly caught the attention of industry producers who immediately marked him out for future success. That’s all well and good, apart from the fact he made the mistake of signing a multi-picture contract without reading the small print.
Tatum’s first role after the aforementioned Step Up sequel was Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberley Peirce’s war drama Stop-Loss, which was backed by Paramount. The company liked what they saw in Tatum and decided to get into business with the actor by tying him down to a three-film deal after he made his feature debut in 2005’s Coach Carter.
In a situation not entirely dissimilar from Edward Norton effectively being threatened into appearing in the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, which either ironically or coincidentally hailed from the same studio, Paramount decreed that Tatum was the perfect candidate to lead GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra as Duke.
It’s a rite of passage for any fresh talent to make their blockbuster debut sooner rather than later after they’ve made waves with their breakout role, but one potential sticking point was that Tatum had absolutely no interest in anchoring Stephen Sommers’ toyetic action spectacular.
“The first one I passed on seven times,” he admitted. “But they had an option on me, and I had to do the movie.” The Rise of Cobra was a minor box office success and has some novelty value based entirely on the fact it’s basically a live-action remake of Team America without a hint of self-awareness, but Tatum would have been much happier if it didn’t exist at all.
“Look, I’ll be honest. I fucking hate that movie. I hate that movie,” he told Howard Stern. “I was pushed into doing that movie.” He didn’t want to be an action hero, but he didn’t really have a choice, either. “The studio calls up, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we got a movie for you, we’re going to send it to you’. And they send it to you, and it’s GI Joe.”
Of course, based on his scathing assessment of The Rise of Cobra, it’s entirely fair to wonder why Tatum ended up returning for the sequel, Retaliation. The answer is a simple one that ticked two distinctly different boxes from both a contractual and personal perspective.
The first is that he was obligated to do so after he confirmed that he “obviously just didn’t want to do that one either,” and the second is that Paramount were at least gracious enough to acquiesce to his requests and ensure Duke was killed off in the opening act after minimal screentime.
