14 DAY TRIAL // Before Channing Tatum appeared as Duke in “G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra” in 2009, a role he would reprise in the 2013 sequel, he was just the handsome guy with killer moves from the “Step Up” flicks, who probably couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.
“G.I. Joe” was a critical flop (both of them, actually), but they made many millions at the box office - enough to put him on the map and in a position in which he could actually have a say about the roles he accepted.
Speaking with Howard Stern about “Magic Mike XXL,” Tatum says that he is sort of sorry he did the 2 “Joe” movies because he knew from the start they would be bad: what else can you expect from a movie with such a bad script?
Still, as you can hear him say in the audio below (*please note that some discretion is recommended for language that might offend), turning down the part was not an option. It wasn’t the direction he wanted to go in because he knew it would lead to typecasting, but he couldn’t refuse because he had signed a 3-picture deal.
So he did as he was told. He regrets being part of that critical disaster, but he knows some things in his career happened the way they did because of the Duke role, such as it was.