While doing his press tour for Magic Mike XXL, it was only a matter of time until someone asked Channing Tatum about prepping for his Gambit role. Though he didn’t reveal too much in the way of plot details or his character arc, Tatum did assuage some fan fears regarding card tricks, his Cajun accent, and the X-Man’s costume. Magic Mike XXL writer/producer Reid Carolin, who is also a producer on the Gambit film, was also on hand to talk about how the standalone film would fit into the overall superhero universe.

I was particularly interested in Tatum’s approach to finding the perfect accent for Gambit, as explained here:

“I’m from the south, so I know who to go to to find the accent. I haven’t found ‘the guy’ yet, because generally that’s how I do accents. I’ll find the person I want to sound like and not just do a generic Cajun accent. So I haven’t found the guy yet.”

As far as Gambit’s costume, Tatum was a little more cagey in his response:

“That’s kind of the fun part, to massage it. You can’t just, like, do it how people think. You want to give it some base of reality. If you do do it, you got to make it sort of relative to the reality.”

Carolin also clued us in on just how Gambit will fit into the overall cinematic universe:

“This is a standalone movie and it’s the story of Gambit and we’ll probably gradually integrate that character into the X-Men universe as we go. As far as what characters from the X-Men universe make it into the movie — we’re not exactly sure yet, so we’re figuring it out. It’s still at the script stage… It’s his story in New Orleans.”

Director Rupert Wyatt’s Gambit opens October 7, 2016. Listen to Tatum and Carolin talking about Gambit in the video interview below (via Digital Spy):