TORONTO – Channing Tatum gives it his all – and arguably shows even more – in his new movie “Roofman.”
Director Derek Cianfrance’s dramedy (in theaters Oct. 10) is based on the true story of Jeffrey Manchester (played by Tatum), a struggling dad and former soldier who’s imprisoned after he’s caught robbing McDonald’s restaurants. He escapes jail and winds up living in Toys ‘R Us, making a home away from home for himself in an alcove behind a bunch of bike racks and sleeping in a bed with Spider-Man sheets.
It’s a role that will put Tatum squarely in the best actor conversation, one that shows all of his dramatic and comedic skills. One scene in particular played really well for the premiere crowd at Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 6. The store manager (Peter Dinklage) catches Jeffrey, mid-rinse and naked after taking a shower. The fugitive runs for it, crashing through clotheslines made of jump ropes, crashing on the floor several times, climbing the bike racks and leaping over the wall to his secret sanctuary.
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Movie audiences will get a whole bunch of Tatum’s butt, and understandably, he was a little worried about them getting an eyeful up front, too.
“I was looking at Derek, and I was just like, ‘How are you not going to see stuff?’ ” Tatum, 45, tells USA TODAY in an interview a day later alongside co-star Kirsten Dunst. “And he’s just like, ‘We’re going to figure it out.’ And I was like, ‘We’re going to see stuff. That’s just what it is, unless you’re just going to paint it out and make it look like I don’t have any bits.’ “
Tatum figured the bike rack he jumps on would be high enough not to see anything questionable at the beginning of the scene. As he got higher, then it could be troublesome: “I was like, ‘How are you guys not just going to be looking right down the barrel?’ “
They also took quite a few takes getting it right. “I wish I could say that we did it just a few times,” Tatum says. “We did that thing like 15, 16, 17 times.”
“Oh, no,” Dunst chimes in. “I didn’t know that many. That’s a lot.”
The trickiest part, however, was Tatum running through the clotheslines and not looking “too cartoonish,” he adds. “That was weirdly the only thing that was really holding that scene up. We couldn’t figure that little part out.”
Tatum gave a special shoutout to Dinklage for braving that revealing sequence with him: “He was my homie on that one. I was just like, ‘I’m sorry, pal.’ He’s just like, ‘You’re doing great, kid!’ “
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Channing Tatum talks ‘Roofman’ and his must-see naked scene
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