Channing Tatum – Magic Man

After a lengthy hiatus, Channing Tatum is back to cap off his blockbusting strip trilogy. The man with the moves opens up about laughing, crying, dancing, and finding love with Zoë Kravitz

- By Jessica Pressler. Photographs by Mario Sorrenti

"I'll go slow." Promises Channing Tatum.

He looks down, his chiseled brow furrowed in concern. "How's that?" he asks. "Too slow?"

As an athlete and a dancer, Tatum is used to contorting his body into exotic positions, and it doesn't take long for him to find his rhythm.

"Oh, yeah," he says. His thighs are taut. His massive hands are made for stuff like this. "That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah." I find myself starting to lose control. "Oh, God," I say.

"Oh, shit." "Oh, yeah!" Tatum announces triumphantly. "We're making a baby!"

"Oh, nooo," I shriek. The hunk of clay I have been attempting to make into a vase slips from my grasp and flings itself dramatically off the pottery wheel, which continues to spin madly, splattering me with viscous brown liquid until the instructor at the Brooklyn studio where we've been taking a lesson comes over to gently remind me to take my foot off the pedal.

Tee-hee-hee. I hear a giggle from the next wheel over. Tatum is hunched like a giant over his tiny bud vase, his broad shoulders, encased in a white long-sleeve T-shirt with "The Power to Satisfy" written across the chest, shaking with laughter.

"It's so funny, dude," he manages eventually. "I wish there was a video component to this interview, so I could just press Play and see you just, like, riding clay. Like you're just trying to hold on to it like it's a bull-riding competition, and you keep getting thrown off." Tee-hee-hee.