Channing Tatum forced to confirm Gambit accent supposed to be like that
Channing Tatum wants you to know he was making his Gambit lines hard to understand on purpose, okay?
Photo: Jo Hale/FilmMagic
[This article contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.]
Nobody likes having to explain a joke—especially when the joke is “I am doing something so obviously bad that it will be clear to everyone that I’m doing this on purpose.” Hence our mild sympathy for Channing Tatum recently, who apparently felt like he had to make it clear to at least some people that the Gambit accent he’s sporting in his appearance in this summer’s big money ‘n’ cameos machine Deadpool & Wolverine is supposed to be like that.
Tatum has been making the press rounds lately, in support of his new thriller Blink Twice (directed by his partner, Zoë Kravitz). That’s included lots of Gambit talk, including revealing to Vanity Fair that he chickened out of stealing the costume he wore in the film, even though he normally takes an outfit from every movie he does. (Somewhere in Hollywood, a costume supervisor’s hand clenches in rage.) But it also included giving Access Hollywood the dreaded “I guess I have to explain this joke,” telling the outlet, about his accent, “We actually intended it to be somewhat unintelligible. That was sort of the joke.” (To be clear, we think this comes across pretty well in the film, but it’s still kind of grim that Tatum felt he needed to get out ahead of critiques.)
In fact, Tatum says star Ryan Reynolds told him to amp the Cajun accent up and down in pursuit of comedy in the film; Reynolds would “Come up to me and say, ‘I don’t want to know anything that you’re saying on this one,’ so I just dialed it all the way up. And then other ones he’s like, ‘All right, I’ve got to understand what you’re saying now.’” Which is kind of wild, when you think about it: Nobody in Hollywood has pined harder for a specific superhero part than Tatum has for this one, and having to render at least part of that performance as a joke has got to feel kind of weird. (Also, we remain infinitely curious about what the actual filming of these movies is like; does official director Shaun Levy just get out his iPad and watch a YouTube while Reynolds directs his co-stars?) Anyway, Tatum himself seems happy enough with the result, and even holds out hope that he will someday get that Gambit movie, even though there is no actual universe in which that happens. Gambit: Inspirational and unintelligible in equal measure!