Channing Tatum bares all on hottest dances in 'Magic Mike 3': 'I almost killed Salma Hayek'
Channing Tatum is saddling up once more to play “Pony” enthusiast Mike Lane for the third and seemingly final chapter for the former stripper.
He rides again with Steven Soderbergh, who returns to direct “Magic Mike's Last Dance” (in theaters Friday), perfectly timed to turn up the heat on Valentine's Day (and just days before Super Bowl Sunday).
When we reunite with the title character eight years after sequel “Magic Mike XXL,” he’s bartending in Miami and his dancing days are behind him. But the wealthy Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek), nursing a broken heart over her crumbled marriage to a media giant, coaxes a dance out of Mike. The sensual routine is teased in the trailer and is even steamier in the movie. Mike leads Maxandra to a chair, pulls her close, and begins stripping for her. He hoists her in the air and uses her living room like his own personal stage. She blindfolds him. (We told you, it's hot!)
After seeing Mike in action, Maxandra whisks him away to London to direct a male revue at a stuffy theater she owns.
In actuality, the sexiness of Tatum and Hayek’s routine is a bit of movie magic, he says.
“The reality of the situation is that it's kind of not actually sexy at times,” says Tatum, 42, seated next to Hayek, 56. “It's hilarious.” And dangerous, it turns out.
“I almost killed Salma Hayek,” Tatum deadpans.
The move required Hayek to be upside down, while Tatum held on to her legs.
She fell down “really fast,” she remembers. "And then he tried to grab me and held onto my (pants). So my pants started to slide. So me, instead of putting my hands on the floor, kept grabbing onto my pants.” While Tatum tried to convince Hayek to steady herself by putting her hands on the floor, she resisted. “I was afraid my pants were going to come off,” she says. “But thank God he saved me.”
Another routine in “Last Dance” also proved tricky to film, one in which Tatum and dancer Kylie Shea perform on the theater’s rain-soaked stage.
“It's very slippery,” Tatum says of the number inspired by the Magic Mike Live shows, performed in Las Vegas and London, which he conceived and directed. “We've had a version of that for a long time, and I've always wanted to do it. … What’s funny about it is when you watch it, you’re like, ‘That is so intimate. It is so hot and… ’ ”
“Sexual,” says Hayek, assisting her co-star. “You can say the word.”
“When you're in it, it is the farthest thing from sexual,” he says. “It's just not. You're trying not to, one, kill the person that you're dancing with, and then also not hurt yourself.”
Both Tatum and Shea were injured, Hayek reveals. He ruptured a previously slipped disc doing squats days before filming the scene, which left him unable to rehearse. A stand-in less familiar with the choreography fumbled it and Shea was injured.
“She did that entire dance completely and utterly hurt,” says Tatum. “Could barely walk and somehow she figured it out.”
Getting a taste of what it takes might make one understand why Tatum would want to bow out of the film series. But will the third movie really be his “Last Dance”?
“I'm done being Magic Mike. I think I'm finished,” he says, before offering a glimmer of hope.
“But like Marvel characters, once they die, if you pay them enough money, they somehow magically come back to life,” he says with a laugh. “That’s maybe going to happen. I don't know. ... Sometimes you can resurrect people.”
Here’s hoping the studio pulls out the big cash cannons – for cinema’s sake.
More from the 'Magic Mike' stars:
Channing Tatum recalls 'scary' divorce from Jenna Dewan: Actor doesn't know if he'll marry again
'I can't edit myself': Channing Tatum on directing 'Dog,' 'Magic Mike 3' and Zo? Kravitz
Salma Hayek gushes over 'beautiful photos': Her first magazine cover with daughter Valentina
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Magic Mike 3': Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek talk risky 'Last Dance'
