In a recent interview, Channing Tatum offered a compliment to his Roofman co-star Kirsten Dunst.
“She’s not a diva, where she could easily be, and have earned that. And she’s not,” Tatum told Variety. “She wants to have a cigarette and a whiskey with you and talk shit.”
At the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Monday night, The Hollywood Reporter asked Dunst to return the favor and describe her co-star in the Derek Cianfrance-directed film. As it turned out, the two veteran stars didn’t know each at all before Cianfrance called “action” on the Paramount Pictures production. The first scene they shared happened to be one where their characters meet while attending a singles mixer at Red Lobster.
“We spent zero time together,” Dunst recalled of meeting up on set that day. “He’s a very genuine human being and someone who can’t lie. He is just like a good human. What you see is what you get with Chan.”
Based on “an unbelievable true story,” Roofman casts Tatum as Jeffrey Manchester, an Army veteran and father who is struggling to make ends meet for his family. In doing so, he beings a crime spree by robbing McDonald’s restaurants by cutting holes in the location’s rooftops, a move that earned him the nickname. He’s apprehended by police and sent to prison only to escape after which he lives inside a Toys “R” Us location for six months. During that time, he falls for a woman named Leigh, played by Dunst, a divorced mother who is drawn in by his undeniable charms.
The same could be said for Cianfrance as it relates to Tatum. The veteran filmmaker said he’s long considered Tatum “one of my favorite actors” thanks to his talent and versatility.
“I saw him for the first time in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. I only saw that movie once, but I’ll never forget sitting in the movie theater and seeing this person walk down the street with a vest on, no shirt on underneath, with this dancer’s body. He moved like Gene Kelly, but his face looked like Marlon Brando and he had this intense, vulnerable, wounded masculinity to him,” the director explained. “Then he was in romantic movies and was so swoon worthy. Then he was in action movies and it was heart-pounding. Then he was in comedies and was responsible for some of the funniest moments in the last 20 years.”
When he wrote the script for Roofman, he did so with a plan to “show all sides of Channing Tatum” and offer him the chance to handle all those types of genres in one film. Miramax CEO Jonathan Glickman said working with Tatum was one of the reasons he felt “compelled” to make the film.
“This is the sixth movie I’ve made that Channing Tatum has been the star of, so I’ve seen all sides of him,” he told THR. “I was lucky to be involved in the Jump Street movies, a couple of the G.I. Joe movies, The Vow, which was a great success we had together. He’s an incredible actor. He has a depth that surprises people and an authenticity that is totally real. There’s nothing he does in this movie that surprises me in terms of his skillset. When I read the script, I knew he could pull it off.”
Roofman drops into theaters nationwide on Oct. 10. Tatum and Dunst star alongside Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang and Peter Dinklage. Cianfrance wrote the screenplay with Kirt Gunn. Jamie Patricof, Lynette Howell Taylor, Alex Orlovsky, Duncan Montgomery and Dylan Sellers produced the Paramount title made in association with Miramax, FilmNation, Von Waaden Entertainment, High Frequence, Hunting Lane, 51 Entertainment and Limelight.