Channing Tatum tap dances for the first time–and sings, too

TATUM plays a 1950s actor in latest movie. Ruben V. Nepales

LOS ANGELES—We all know that Channing Tatum can dance up a storm. For the Coen brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!” he learned to tap dance for the first time and he sings, as well. The result is a tap-dance-and-song number, “No Dames!” that would make Gene Kelly proud or maybe even envious.

The “Magic Mike” actor tap dances—even on top of a table—like he’s been doing it all his life. And all the while he impressively sings “No Dames!”—an original song cowritten by Carter Burwell, who composed the movie’s original score. Joel and Ethan shot the sequence very much in the spirit of such movie musicals as “On the Town” and “Anchors Aweigh.”

“No Dames!,” Channing’s only musical number in “Hail…” will make moviegoers wish for more sing-and-dance scenes in the film, which also stars George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson (who has her own Esther Williams-esque musical number, but the Coens said her character is  more like Loretta Lynn’s). We hope Channing and Joseph Gordon-Levitt do make good on their promise to make a full-blown musical together.

Channing plays Burt Gurney, star of musical films in the latter phase of Hollywood’s Golden Age in the 1950s. The movie takes place in a single day, as it follows the life of a studio exec (Josh Brolin) who fixes problems like actors’ scandals reaching the press.

For the number set in a tavern, Channing and several actors, dressed as sailors who are about to go off to sea, sing and dance the tune about the prospect of “no dames” for an extended period.

It’s a fun number—the song is rife with double entendres, and the choreography drips with homoerotic undertones.

“I was probably slipping into another sailor uniform later that night,” the 35-year-old joked at the start of our interview.

The versatile star explained his longish hair these days—he’s hoping to finally play the titular mutant character in “Gambit”: “I am growing it. I mean, hopefully, we get to do ‘Gambit’ at some point in my lifetime.  I am going to hold onto it till I die… I don’t know if it’s going to be this year, but if it’s not, at least we got Doug Liman (as director), so we’re very excited about that… I am just obsessed with the character.”

In the meantime, there’s “Hail, Caesar!” which challenged his dancing skills. “I have never tapped before in my life,” he said. “The script had it, ‘Then, they dance. He does a knee slide to a bucket of water.’ That was it—there was nothing more!  When I first met Joel and Ethan, they showed me a bunch of old clips. They were like, ‘We were thinking, maybe tap. Do you know how to tap?’ I was like, ‘Nope, I don’t know how to tap.  I can try. Let me see how it goes.’

“Joel went on a little further and said, ‘Do you know how to sing?  We are thinking about maybe you singing.’ ‘Nope, I don’t know how to sing.’ They were like, ‘Want to try it?’ I was like, ‘OK.’  I wasn’t worried so much about the singing, because I knew if it sucked, then they could always just dub me over. I wasn’t really stressed out about that.

“But they couldn’t dub me in the actual dance.  So, I was pretty stressed out.  When I went home to Jenna (Dewan, his wife), who really knows how to do all these things, and trained her entire life for them, she was like, ‘You’re doing what in a movie…you’re tapping?’ I almost didn’t even want to tell her anymore!”

The Alabama native credited Christopher Gattelli, the Tony-winning choreographer of “Newsies.”  “He was our choreographer and my teacher,” the actor disclosed. “I started learning in December (2014), and we went through the holidays…

TATUM (standing) and costars play actors in sailor costumes.

“We shot it in late February or March (2015). So, I had a good long time.

“I got to a point where I could do all the steps. But being able to perform while you do the steps is a whole different thing, where you aren’t just thinking the whole time. When it really started to be fun, when you can just listen to the music and  be in the pocket, then it was good! The shooting was three days.”

Was he like this as a child, eager to learn something new? “When you have ADD (attention deficit disorder), you definitely are trying a lot of different things,” he said matter-of-factly. “You are not doing anything really well; you are just doing a bunch of stuff all at once.”

Channing sounded just as even-keeled when asked about how Jenna deals with his fame. “She is on ‘Supergirl’ right now,” he answered. “She is having an amazing moment! She is acting the whole time—just not in movies. She is one of the most evolved people when it comes to that sort of thing.

“We acknowledge and talk about it. For example, I got to tell her that I will tap dance in this movie. She was like, ‘God, I can do that better than anybody in town right now.’

“But when I say that she’s the most evolved person, she makes me so much better about having a good perspective on things.  That’s just her way.

“Everybody gets to see what is in the tabloids. They forget that we get to wake up every day with each other and deal with every day stuff like, ‘Did you make her (Everly, their daughter) lunch?’ ‘No? OK, I will go down and get whatever.’”

Channing, who’s also in Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” beamed when he talked about Everly. “In May, she will be 3,” he said. The man who always has the girls’ attention mock-complained that in Everly’s case, the dad had to vie for that.

“It’s been about Mama for the first two years. Now, I am starting to get into the equation a little  more, which is fun. We always swim together. She didn’t want Mama involved with that. It’s fun.  I have never worked harder for a girl’s attention than her. It’s frustrating, I have to be honest.

“She loves watching movies, which is cool. It’s about getting to watch her learn things. All of a sudden, she can do something or even has a new word, like ‘disappear.’ I didn’t know she knew that word. Like yesterday, she said ‘disappear” and ‘reappear.’

“Just these weird little small moments… It’s just fascinating. It’s like looking in the mirror.”

The busy dad conceded that his work often takes him away from Everly. “Yeah, it’s an issue,” he said. “We are lucky because right now, we are here. But generally, it involves flying back to LA on a lot of weekends and not getting sleep.”

In the meantime, Channing is enjoying being at home these days. He described their Beverly Hills home as “pretty comfy. Jenna and I are both bad at just filling houses (they also have a ranch house in Ojai, California) with stuff that feels like you should have, like really nice stuff, because we have dogs and obviously a kid. So, everything gets dirty and messed up.  We have nothing in our house that you can’t put your feet up on. That is pretty much our style.

“But we have a  nice house. We live up on the hill. I don’t love living right next to people. I like to be walking around and not staring at someone, so it’s more about what is on the outside of our house.”

Channing revealed an interesting hobby. “I sculpt,” he said. “I picked up sculpting on the set of ‘Haywire’ as I walked through Santa Fe (New Mexico). I was watching this guy through a window. I don’t know why, but I was just like, that’s something I can do. Maybe because I like anatomy.  I was watching him sculpt in this window for long enough. He called me in and  gave me some clay—and I started playing around with it.”

E-mail [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepales

ruben.