CHANNING TATUM, last seen in The Dilemma and Dear John, chats about filming THE EAGLE, an action adventure set in Roman times.
Tatum talks about surviving the cold, doing his own stunts, and how he got injured while making the movie.
**THE EAGLE is in cinemas from 25 March
Channing Tatum as Marcus Aquila in THE EAGLE
MMM: Were there any surprises in terms of the physicality of making The Eagle?
Tatum: Yeah. I don’t think even if they’d told me it was going to be the coldest thing you’ll ever go through in your life, I still don’t think I would have really understood it until the second day and I’m soaked all the way through and it was almost freezing.
Just to be outside for 13 hours, we couldn’t get trailers sometimes to the places we were at. We’d hike in for like 20 or 30 minutes. Our director was even carrying cameras and reels out to the set.
So it’s really a small knit family, and you go through hell together, and that’s really what Jamie [Bell] and my characters did. We were all closer as a family for it.
MMM: In terms of weaponry, how did it compare using swords for real on The Eagle to something like GI Joe?
Tatum: It goes back to my first training, which was in the back yard probably swinging around sticks. I had had training before with martial arts – I did kung fu from when I was 9 to 13. You have to be really careful but you want to make it look eventually as though it’s just a part of you.
MMM: Did you do your own stunts? And were there any injuries?
Tatum: Almost all the stunts, except for the river scene, they wouldn’t let us do going down the rapids because it had been raining for two months straight and the river rose by about 3 feet, and it was too dangerous for us to do; and one horseback-riding scene which we just didn’t have time to do.
But yeah I definitely got hurt, scalded pretty bad during one of the scenes. In the fight scenes though, not really – just bangs and bruises.
There was a moment where I basically have to put Tahar [Rahim, who plays the Seal Prince] under water. It’s so cold that when your head goes underneath the water all thought, all air goes out of you and you’re just in shock. And I had to hold him under water, and he’s supposed to tap me when he’s ready to pull him up, and he didn’t tap me. I was like, am I actually going to kill him? Finally I was like, ‘hey! Wake up!’
MMM: Going back to your injury, apparently it was on quite a sensitive part of your anatomy, and there’s photographic evidence?
Tatum: Yes, Jamie has stolen it and won’t give it back to me. Basically they were trying to keep us warm, this poor guy was running up and down a hill, which was about 10 minutes out from where we were shooting. It was a hike, and he’s got to carry this huge bottle of water back down to the river, and I had met him half way after we wrapped the day, and he didn’t dilute the boiling water with river water to make it just simply hot.
Once they pour it down, you pull it away from your body and it just keeps going lower. So I had no skin anywhere down there to speak of, but we’re good now. Didn’t even scar. Pretty regenerative down there.
MMM: You didn’t tweet it?
Tatum: No, I did not. Now in hindsight I know that my judgment was correct in not tweeting it, but there was a moment.
Jamie Bell as slave Esca
MMM: You have quite a convincing and, towards the end, quite a moving rapport with Jamie’s character. Was it something that came naturally?
Tatum: It was kind of an unforeseen complication, because Jamie and I did get on so well right off the bat, keeping the tension of the story of Marcus and Esca. We had to make sure we reminded each other of it from time to time because it’s a pretty taut line to hold. Until the very end of the movie, we never really laugh till the very last scene. But we were laughing as soon as they yelled ‘cut’, it was a crack-up the whole time.
MMM: There aren’t any female characters in the movie, apart from a couple of very small roles. What was that like?
Tatum: Doing something different is always refreshing, but I don’t think it’s ever refreshing not having women around. I thought it was really accurate, and smart of Kevin and Jeremy to make the decision to really stay with these two characters, and not feel the need to fall into a cinematical stereotype of always need to have a love story, and really just focus on the friendship.
MMM: How much did you know about Roman history?
Tatum: It is taught in American schools but probably not to the extent that is here. It was my favourite subject at school, probably because of the stories and characters. Gladiator and Braveheart are two of my favourite films, so I might have paid a little more attention at school around those subjects than most people. Kevin was great, he comes from the documentary world, so he gave me a lot of material and factual stuff that I could really get into.
By Jan Gilbert
