Channing Tatum photo shoot & interview for OUT

Channing Tatum, during a photo shoot for OUT Magazine, talks about his highly-anticipated MAGIC MIKE movie. The movie is very loosely based on his own experiences as a 19 year old who took a job in a male strip show.

Tatum didn’t intend to be a stripper. He heard an announcement on the radio and thought he might as well add it to his resume of random jobs -- framing houses, working at a puppy nursery, selling credit cards to students -- that sustained his hardcore club life. “I never enjoyed the taking-the-clothes-off part,” he recalls. “You are on a stage with people yelling at you, and you feel you’re a rock star, but you’re nothing -- you’re just a guy taking off his clothes, looking like a fool in a stupid outfit.”

In comparing the movie male revue to the Chippendales, Channing says "what Chippendales does is a big, Vegas type show.  This is a smaller, rinky-dink, small town type show."

In addition to MAGIC MIKE, Channing shares about his humble upbringing. He grew up in Alabama, in what he calls a straight-up middle-class family. His dad was a roofer, until he fell off a roof and damaged his back. His mom worked for AAA. He describes his older sister as “the dog’s bollocks, just the sickest chick on the face of the planet,” and is candid about the world he grew up in.

“My uncle Bruce is about as country as you get,” he says. “He’s not OK with interracial stuff, probably, and I don’t think he’d met a gay man before my wedding. Where I’m from, there’s not a lot of out gay men.”

Read the whole interview and see the pics at Out.com