For years now, Channing Tatum has been one of the best interview subjects in Hollywood. Channing actually makes an effort, and he eschews the typical-actor tropes in surprising and charming ways. You look at him and you think he’s going to be a boring, toxic meathead, and then in his interviews, he shows you his heart, his goofiness, his realness. He covers Variety to promote The Lost City (with Sandra Bullock) and Dog, the small-budget film he co-directed and developed about an Army Ranger on a road trip with a dog. The Variety interviewer notes that Channing is a great storyteller (he is) and that they talked for hours. You can read the full piece here, some highlights:

His wig in ‘The Lost City’: “I definitely have a Fabio wig. But my inspiration was the man himself that’s in our movie, Brad — from ‘Legends of the Fall.’ I was like, ‘I want the “Legends of the Fall” wig,’ I don’t even know if it was his hair. He was f–king gorgeous. And I was like, ‘Please make me that.’”

He took time off because he was burned out. “I felt like I was the fat kid at the buffet, just working and working and working. I took four movies back to back without any time off. I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be in those last two movies because I didn’t have the energy.”

On Jupiter Ascending: “‘Jupiter Ascending’ was a nightmare from the jump. It was a sideways movie. All of us were there for seven months, busting our hump. It was just tough.”

He wishes the film was still called “The Lost City of D”: “I wished they wouldn’t have dropped the ‘D’. You never drop the ‘D.’”

He contemplated quitting acting after his divorce: “Do I want to act anymore? Was I going to direct? Do I want to be in the industry anymore? I got lucky. I won a creative lottery ticket. I made a little bit of money, so I could take a step back and figure out what life is. I really took time off. I sculpted. I took pictures. I wrote my own stuff, not like a script or anything. Just creating on different levels. I wanted to take a breather.”

He loves ‘Pose’: Tatum drops the news that he wishes he could have produced a TV series like “Pose”; he’s a fan of “Paris Is Burning,” the 1990 documentary about New York drag ball culture. “I definitely wanted to live in that world. I found the dancing, the characters, fascinating. But the best people made it.”

He spent four years developing “Gambit,” only for the project to never get off the ground: “The studio really didn’t want us to direct it. They wanted anybody but us, essentially, because we had never directed anything…. They would call [Gambit] ‘flamboyant’ in his description. I wouldn’t — he was just the coolest person. He could pull anything off. Most superheroes, their outfits are utilitarian. Batman’s got his belt. Gambit’s like, ‘No, this sh-t’s just fly, bro! This sh-t walked down the Paris runway last year.’ He’s just wearing the stuff that’s so dope because he loves fashion. Once ‘Gambit’ went away, I was so traumatized,” Tatum says, adding that he swore off watching the Avengers. “I shut off my Marvel machine. I haven’t been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him.”

On the third Magic Mike movie: “This one’s going to be a full dance-icle. We’re going to swing for the fence. I’m going to dance as hard as I’ve danced in any movie other than ‘Hail, Caesar!’ I want this movie to be filled with joy and fun. Everybody is like, ‘Less character, more dancing.’ So I’ve listened.”

[From Variety]

I love that Channing sits around, watching Pose and thinks “man, I love this culture, I wish I could have produced this!” That just… says a lot about him. You think he’s going to be a close-minded redneck but really he wishes he could be throwing ass with all the drag queens. Sad about Gambit, but I feel like long-term, he learned a lot about the process and the industry through all of that. He’s been so wise to develop his own projects too, he’s added years to his career and it’s clear he and his partners have tons of great ideas.

Cover courtesy of Variety, additional photo courtesy of Instar.