Channing Tatum has once again drawn inspiration from his past as a stripper for “Magic Mike XXL”, the second opus centered on dancer and entrepreneur Mike Lane. Memories that he has long struggled to come to terms with.
Magic Mike XXL : a road trip for strippers
Three years after introducing the character to the public in a first part signed Steven Soderbergh, Channing Tatum took over the role of entrepreneur Mike Lane in 2015 in Magic Mike XXL. In this second opus directed by Gregory Jacobs, assistant director of the filmmaker behind Out of reach and Ocean’s Eleventhe entrepreneur gave up his career as a stripper.
But when he learns of the death of Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, absent from this sequel), Mike agrees to become “Magic” again to follow Tarzan (Kevin Nash), “Big” Dick (Joe Manganiello), Ken (Matt Bomer), Tito (Adam Rodriguez) and Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias) in a road trip to South Carolina, where they plan to attend a stripper convention.
Amber Heard, Elizabeth Banks, Jada Pinkett Smith, Andie MacDowell and Donald Glover complete the cast of this dramatic comedy, with which Channing Tatum wanted to highlight the secondary characters more. The actor and producer was also once again inspired by his own experience as a stripper, sincehe himself went to several conventions at the age of 19.
“Memories a bit heavy to bear” for Channing Tatum
During an evening, Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin block on the writing of the plot of Magic Mike XXL. But after several glasses of bourbon, as they entrust to Vanity Fair in 2015, the screenwriter asked the actor to draw on his memories to find a solution.
Reid Carolin recalls:
I was like, “Man, what happened when you went to that convention?”
Channing Tatum adds:
This is the problem. We didn ‘t do anything. We congratulated each other, we said to each other how beautiful and wonderful we were.
His sidekick says he said to him:
Well, we have a movie.
Which therefore gave birth to the positive energy of Magic Mike XXL. And if the feature film is precisely lighter than its predecessor, Digging back into your past wasn’t always fun for the actor, as he assures Female Version :
I made this film to come to terms with the life I led when I was nineteen. I also wanted my mother to be proud of me when she saw me in this feature film and to make her understand a little better what I had done in the past. (…) These are memories that are still a bit heavy to assume! (laughs) I tried to forget all those years because of course I have to admit that I had some very embarrassing times. I was often hired to dance at bachelor parties, for birthdays… I even took part in two world conventions for strippers!
