We’re all eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Magic Mike film in February. And ahead of Magic Mike 3: Magic Mike’s Last Dance release on the 10th, Channing Tatum has opened up about how having a daughter has turned him into even more of a feminist as it has made him realise just “how scary the world is for women”.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the 42-year-old reflected on his acting career, saying that his biggest and most important role to date has been being a father to his 9-year-old daughter, Everly, whom he shares with his ex-wife, Jenna Dewan.
“It just started with my daughter,” Channing said of his break from acting. “I just dropped everything and just focused on her. And it was truly the best possible thing that I ever could have done. Because in the alone time that I have with just me and her, we’ve become best friends.”
The self-proclaimed feminist was raised around strong women and has always been close to his mum and sister but Tatum pinpoints his recent feminist awakening to the birth of his daughter.
“Only in having a daughter did it start to really scare me how scary the world is for women,” Channing explained. “You can conceive it when you love someone that is a girl, but it doesn’t land in the same way as having a tiny female human in the world that is so vulnerable and looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses.”
It comes after Tatum opened up to Fatherly about what he’s learned since becoming a dad in an interview about children’s book, The One and Only Sparkella Makes a Plan.
“You don’t even need to be cute. You could just put on the dress and still be yourself,” he said. “It’s just going to be even funnier to them. Like you could be as grumpy and as tough and whatever as you want to be, wear the tiara.”
The Step Up star previously admitted that he “completely panicked” when he first found out that he and his ex-wife Jenna Dewan, were having a girl. He “literally went to YouTube” in a bid to learn as much as he could about becoming a father to a girl.
Back in 2021, Tatum revealed that he once tried to style Everly’s hair with a vacuum cleaner before he learned how to braid hair, and still has a hard time getting “three close-to-the-head equal strands.”
Speaking about the latest Magic Mike movie; Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Tatum said that the third instalment has ‘strong female characters’; something that the previous two films in the franchise were missing.
“Really, the first two movies are feathered-fish sort of movies, in my opinion,” he said. “They’re movies about men made for women, or people that like men, but none of them had really strong female characters. So it felt like we sort of hoodwinked people on some level. Like we cheated the code.”
Addressing the addition of Salma Hayek Pinault as lead character Maxandra Mendoza in the new film, he added: “I think we wanted that specifically because I feel some sort of more responsibility that the other movies weren’t about women, they were about men.”
