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stack.net.nz
with
CHANNINGTATUM
&
REID CAROLIN
.
2
1
3 4
The first
Magic Mike
was a global
success, and I’m wondering how that
informed your approach to
Magic
Mike XXL
?
REID CAROLIN:
We never planned
on
Magic Mike
succeeding in the way
it did.
CHANNINGTATUM:
We made it in
such a way that we assured ourselves
that it could at least break even.
[Laughs]
RC:
It was a movie about rejecting the
world of stripping and leaving behind
some of the narcissistic qualities that
make you want to stay away from
that world. At the same time, people
really embraced the characters and the
dancing and all of these other things,
and everyone started asking, ‘What are
you going to do with the second one?’
Honestly, there were a million ways
that you could make a sequel to a dance
movie just to make money. But I think,
for us, it was always about if we’re going
to do this, let’s do our best not to let
that be our intention because if it was,
it would just fall apart at the seams.
Luckily, it’s based on a storyline that was
really part of the reason we wanted to
make the first movie, but which we just
couldn’t find a place for at the time. So
we thought to ourselves, ‘Well, we still
wFoant to make that movie.’ Regardless
if the first one succeeded or not, we
would probably be thinking about trying
to make that movie at some point in our
careers anyway.
CT:
Because it’s so weird.
RC:
Because it’s so freaking weird,
exactly. Then you’ve got this group
of guys we cast, whose characters
were just barely explored because
they weren’t the focus of the movie:
Matt Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, Joe
Manganiello, Kevin Nash. On the first
movie, Matt Bomer would be singing
to keep the audience at our fake strip
club engaged between takes. And we
watched Joe Manganiello and Kevin
Nash cracking jokes backstage, and
Adam Rodriguez doing his thing. We
looked at all of them and thought, ‘Well,
that’s a movie. So how do we make it?’
CT:
Just being themselves and not
playing into these old stereotypes of
what strippers do on stage or these
archetypes of firemen and men in police
uniforms, they’re the best versions of
any stripper that has ever lived.
After the opening weekend of the first
movie, we were thinking, ‘Man, I think
we might get a chance to make another
one if we want to, and we definitely
know Matt’s singing. What else do we
have?’
That was pretty much where we
started—I’ve got to be honest. There
was no over-arching dramatic storyline
or anything. I regretted not having more
room for the guys in the first film. They
were complete discoveries. I had never
worked with any of them, except once
with Adam. And they just came in and
wowed us. They completely became
these people that we weren’t expecting,
and they were all so interesting.
We looked at all of
them and thought,
‘Well, that’s a
movie. So how do
we make it?’