What's your first memory of Channing Tatum? Perhaps it’s from 2006 when he slid across the hood of a car and straight into your heart in the first Step Up movie? Or is it a few years into his career, when he made his big comedic break in 2012's 21 Jump Street, playing a cop who goes undercover as a high school student to bust a drug ring? Channing Tatum first got his acting break in the Amanda Bynes teen comedy She's the Man, a loose Shakespeare adaptation of Twelfth Night in which Bynes, dressed in drag, pretends to be her brother and joins the soccer team at his boarding school, where she meets and falls in love with her brother’s roommate Duke, played by a hunky 25-year-old Tatum, who spends most of his screen time shirtless.
That’s the kind of actor Channing Tatum started out as, showing all the makings of your typical hunk: chiseled abs, chiseled jaw, smoldering eyes and a pout. At his start Tatum could be compared to peak Chad Michael Murray (during his playing-token-hot-guy-in-every-teen-rom-com days) except his impressive athleticism boosted him for roles such as “hot soccer player” or “hot dancer” (an upgrade from generic "hot guy"). No spoiler here but their careers obviously took drastically different turns. Now, you already know this piece is gonna be along the lines of “Channing Tatum could have stayed ‘just a heartthrob’ but now he's a serious actor and boy is he wonderful in Hail, Caesar!” Well, sort of. But the beauty of Channing Tatum is that he’s at his prime while still remaining very much his old self. Tatum has yet to outgrow the “hot dancer” phase, thanks to what was arguably his career best in last year’s stripper sensation, Magic Mike XXL, a surprisingly superior sequel to the already way-better-than-expected Magic Mike.
How Tatum went from male rom-com lead to this multi-talented actor can largely be credited to Steven Soderbergh. After a string of forgettable films (2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, 2010's Dear John, 2011's The Dilemma, etc.) Soderbergh tapped him for three movies in three consecutive years: Haywire (2011), Magic Mike (2012), and Side Effects (2013). Being a respectable name in Hollywood, Soderbergh (best known for the Ocean's series and Traffic, for which he took home an Oscar) elevated Tatum's profile, making him a one-to-watch among other auteur directors. Like Zac Efron, who has yet to have his Channing Moment (it will eventually happen), Tatum has always been a stellar performer, despite how dumb the movie or role—he just needed the right director to notice and recruit him. Soderbergh has always had a knack for pulling unexpected moves and bringing out hidden potential in unsuspecting players (like casting then-porn star Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience).
Book-ending two Soderbergh thrillers (Haywire and Side Effects), Tatum starred in the campy Magic Mike, doing what he does best, only under the lens of the director's stylistic flourish. Magic Mike is a best-of-both-worlds example of how Tatum's talents can be used. After connecting with Soderbergh, the next few years opened new doors for Tatum. In 2014, he proved himself a worthy dramatic actor in Foxcatcher, alongside Steve Carell, who also found his dramatic actor moment in the film. With that momentum (let's call it the Soderbergh Effect), Tatum has come up with a monumental past couple of months—and he might finally be getting people to wake up about his talent.
Just this past December, Tatum appeared in The Hateful Eight, positioning himself as Quentin Tarantino's final-act reveal and possible new secret weapon. His role in the latest Tarantino could be compared to Leonardo DiCaprio's in Django Unchained: that famous actor who's there for as much audience entertainment as he is to shake up the plot. Fast forward to early February and Tatum appears in a Coen brothers movie (Hail, Caesar!), his few minutes of screen time standing out in a cast that's as star-studded as it gets.
In Hail, Caesar! Josh Brolin stars as a Hollywood "fixer" who is faced with a $100,000 ransom when a big shot movie star (George Clooney) gets kidnapped during the filming of a movie by the same name: Hail Caesar. As the latest Coen brothers project is a satirical ode to old Hollywood, the film takes us around the studio lot where several other films are in the works, making room for its bloated bill. Ralph Fiennes plays an eccentric director by the name of Laurence Laurentz who is ridiculously methodical and tormented by the unfitting casting of popular Western film star Hobie Doyle (played by up-and-comer Alden Ehrenreich). Scarlett Johansson plays an aqua-musical diva, Tilda Swinton plays twins, both celebrity gossip columnists, while Frances McDormand appears as a kooky film editor in the movie's most farcical scene, and Jonah Hill, who gets top billing for a barely-there scene, appears as a notary. Like his Jump Street and Hail, Caesar! co-star Channing Tatum, Hill has had his own Tatum-esque career shift from his Superbad days thanks to his Oscar-nominated role in Moneyball (directed by Bennett Miller, who also did Foxcatcher) and his huge break in Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, for which he also received an Oscar nom. Tatum and Hill have also both scored Tarantino roles (the latter appeared as a cameo in Django Unchained.)
This isn't a completely unique career course; there have been other actors who have become auteur director muses between bouts of mainstream movies. Luke and Owen Wilson will do silly comedies while being frequent players in Wes Anderson films. Tatum has so far only had recurring roles in films by Soderbergh (who's technically "retired") but it doesn't seem long before he becomes a regular muse to others. Tatum's recent involvement with the biggest names in Hollywood gives him a newfound rise that crosses him over to more art film territory.
What makes Channing Tatum such a director's darling, I assume, is that he's unafraid to be silly and give commitment and charisma to that silliness. He's willing to rock a chipped tooth and twang and get bloodied in The Hateful Eight. And in the Coen brothers' latest, he does an uproarious sing-and-tap-dance number a la Gene Kelly in a sailor costume that'll have you squealing as much as you did during that last Magic Mike XXL number. Tatum also gets another plot twist reveal in Hail, Caesar! (which I won't spoil for you), once again proving that when used by the right directors, he can be the greatest asset in a film. Outshining Clooney, Swinton, Johansson, et al. is no easy feat, and yet Tatum is the easy winner of Hail, Caesar!
The screwball nature of the film, which is possibly the funniest Coen brothers film yet (in a flat-out ha-ha funny way rather than their usual trademark dark-funny), also fits Tatum's comedic sensibility. It's a sense of humor that's carried over to real life (or as real-life as talk shows get), whether he is lip-syncing Beyoncé in drag or being terrifyingly charming. He's a dude's dude but also an object of lust (for any party), which has gotten him the kind of rabid fanbase that makes his appearance in a Coen brothers film or a Tarantino an extra special treat.
Just a day before Hail, Caesar!'s release, Tatum has been rumored to star in Soderbergh's retirement-breaking next film, a director-muse pair that people are excited to see reunited. Even if that story is false (Soderbergh has denied it on Twitter), Tatum's career is at the point where he'll often be first-picked among Hollywood's directorial elites. With good looks and talents in the holy trifecta of performance (singing, dancing, and acting), Channing Tatum is unstoppable. It's only a matter of time before he gets more than just a few minutes in any one of these directors' films. Maybe all those A-list directors who turned down Gambit (in which Tatum stars and produces) are regretting their decision right about now.
