How Was Channing Tatum Introduced To His Lost City Co-Stars?(Photo Credit –Facebook)
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Channing Tatum didn’t just stroll back into Hollywood in The Lost City. He dropped in without clothes and was covered in fake leeches. Literally. On his second day on set, Tatum had to meet the A-list cast while fully exposed in a scene that demanded both physical and comedic commitment.
“We didn’t have any live leeches on set. We had a man gluing rubber leeches to my butt. That was my second day on set, and I had to be buck-n*ked. I was like, ‘Hi, my name is Chan. I’ll be n*ked today.’ Everyone is trying to look up and away,” he said in an interview with Variety.
The Lost City hit theaters in 2022, marking Channing Tatum’s big-screen comeback. After his 2017 caper Logan Lucky and a voice cameo in Free Guy, he’d taken a long break from live-action roles. Whether it was his split from Jenna Dewan or the collapse of his Gambit project, he kept a low profile until Dog, the film he co-directed and starred in, landed just a month before The Lost City.
Then came the jungle, the romance-novel rescue mission, and his introduction to Sandra Bullock… in his birthday suit. Bullock, who played a kidnapped romance novelist in the film, confirmed just how raw the situation was. She shared in the same interview: “We had [Tatum’s] trainer in the budget. We had his blanched chicken and broccoli in the budget. He would be up at 4, going for a swim in the ocean. He worked so hard for a comedic moment that he knew needed to look and be a certain way. And I spent the remainder of the day just looking at it all, having long monologues to his bits and pieces.”
That awkward day may have helped break the ice. And considering the stacked cast, which included Daniel Radcliffe as an eccentric billionaire and Brad Pitt as a wild-card rescue agent, it probably didn’t hurt to get vulnerable early. Channing Tatum, of course, wasn’t new to letting it all hang out. He’d been a stripper in his teens, danced his way through Step Up, and built a franchise off abs and charm with Magic Mike. Still, The Lost City gave him a new challenge: glued-on leeches.
This wild reentry into movies didn’t stop there. Right after The Lost City, he lined up one more round of shirtless storytelling in Magic Mike’s Last Dance. Steven Soderbergh returned to direct, and although cast details stayed under wraps, fans expected familiar faces from the original 2012 film and Magic Mike XXL.
So yes, Channing Tatum’s reintroduction to his co-stars might have been awkward. But it also proved one thing: He didn’t just come back. He dove in, leeches and all.
