In an appearance on Hot Ones, Mark Ruffalo reflected on slapping Channing Tatum so hard during the production of 2014's wrestling-centric Foxcatcher that he accidentally popped his co-star's eardrum.
"Fact or fiction: Is it true that you once accidentally popped Channing Tatum's ear during a particularly physical scene in Foxcatcher, where he told you before the take, 'Just slap the shit out of me and get it over with'?" asked Sean Evans around the 8:20 point of the episode, as seen above.
"Oh, there was a lot of that," replied 56-year-old Ruffalo. "He did ask me to slap the shit out of him. And it was easy to do because he'd beaten the shit out of me so many times."
Ruffalo co-starred alongside Tatum and Steve Carrell in the 2014 biographical drama, which ultimately earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 2015 Academy Awards. "It was like four months of wrestling, of learning how to wrestle together," Ruffalo added of the experience. "He has 30 pounds on me, so when it came to smack the shit out of him, I was like, 'Came from Alabama."
Tatum previously revealed he sustained the injury when speaking with reporters at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, per Variety. He said that after he told Ruffalo to "just slap the shit out of me," the Avengers actor, who portrayed his character Mark Schultz's brother David Schultz, popped his eardrum. "All of a sudden it’s just making a screeching noise. I can’t hear anything," Tatum shared. "Eardrums heal, so I’m fine."
Elsewhere in the interview on Hot Ones, Ruffalo spoke about the time he shared an apartment with Joaquin Phoenix when they were working on the 2007 drama Reservation Road.
"He’s a great cook, and he turned me on to vegan cuisine, and so he would cook all the time and he was a great roommate," Ruffalo said. "He was a roommate who would be out and you’d get a text, ‘You need anything? Need me to pick up anything?’ The place is clean, all the dishes were washed, he’s got a great sense of humor."
Watch the full episode of Hot Ones up top, and see some highlights below.
