Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey, the stars of Magic Mike, talk about on-set camaraderie, ripped thongs, and embarrassing stripteases.

Magic Mike is out now in UK cinemas.

For funny Magic Mike images, click here.

Channing Tatum on the inspiration behind Magic Mike:

I did a movie called Haywire with director Steven Soderbergh earlier in the year. And over a beer I told him about one of these stories of my life, and his jaw hit the ground. He was like, ‘that would make a great movie – you should write it.’ I’m like: ‘Okay Steven Soderbergh, I’m gonna get right on that, and write a movie, which I’ve never done before!’ [Laughs]

Cut to three or four months later, we’re having lunch together, and he says, ‘Look, we should finance this ourselves. You and your business partner should write it, I’ll direct it, and we’ll produce it and sell it ourselves.’ So, we decided to march forward.

Matthew McConaughey talks on-set camaraderie:

We had a ball on set. A lot of times, when you’re done with your work for the day you go home. But every one of the guys, when they were done with their work, say at lunch, would stay all afternoon to see the next guy do his dance.

The dancing part for all of us was sort of on a dare… we all walked off the plank and fell in the moat together. So when somebody pulled it off, you were rooting for him.

I had a ball with Dallas – he’s the guy who, in his mind, believes he’s the messiah of male revues. He’s really committed to that. That’s where the humour comes from.

Matthew McConaughey on his malfunctioning thong:

I got half my thong ripped off me… the string that connects the front to the back on the right side. I felt this ‘pop’. My left hand was up and I was straddling the dance floor, and I felt it get a little cooler where it wasn’t so cool before.

And I remember just trying to stay in rhythm, covering my God-gave-mes to stop them rolling out of that thing, and trying to stay on a beat.



Channing Tatum on his most embarrassing experience as a stripper:

Anytime the curtain goes back and there’s a lot of people and you’ve got to get naked, it’s pretty embarrassing. And you better hope it’s not cold in the room when you gotta take down your draws.

But the most embarrassing thing that happened was that my sister was in the audience, a few feet away from me, and she had six of her friends there on the first night that I actually stripped.

Almost my mom would have been better because at least my mom’s seen me naked before. But my sister… we do not have that relationship… we might be from the South and Alabama, but we do not have that relationship. [Laughs]

Channing Tatum on the Magic Mike club:

It was filmed in a real club, but we went in and made it look worse than it actually looked. We tried to make it look pretty cheesy, it’s not supposed to be a big production or Chippendales type thing, it’s supposed to be pretty low-rent, Tampa style. Tampa’s a really small town.

Matthew McConaughey on working with director Steven Soderbergh:

I adored working with Steven. I’ve never worked with anyone like him before. You learn pretty quickly that when you show up on set, you better be your character right then, because he’s not gonna come over and tell you, ‘Okay guys, now it’s time’. He’ll sit back and observe for five minutes, ten minutes, an hour.

When you get to the scene, you start doing what you’re going to do and then all of a sudden the camera shows up in your face, and you see Steven with his glasses pop up from behind the camera and give you a little thumbs up, which means: ‘do what you do’ or ‘we got it already, thanks, guys.’ And you’re like: ‘when did you shoot it?!’