For Magic Mike XXL stars Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello and Matt Bomer, the chance to re-team with each other was enough to return for the sequel to Magic Mike. Sure, the story works quite well, as we stated in our Magic Mike XXL review. But, these guys have gotten close making the first movie, and for Manganiello and Bomer, it’s the culmination of a collective lifetime dream for these two who went to drama school together.
“We’ve done Shaw together,” Bomer said.
“Chekhov and Shakespeare and Ibsen and all of that. Now, at this moment in our careers where Scene 1, Take 1, Joe, you’re going to get naked and cannonball Channing into a pool, that education really paid off,” Manganiello said as the cast all laughed.
There is no one who is more thrilled for Bomer, who finally gets to show off his angelic voice in Magic Mike XXL, than Manganiello.
“Matt is such a humble guy. And I feel like sometimes I’m Matt’s agent. Matt can sing! We were on Part 1 one night and Matt and I went out to this karaoke bar, and I dared Matt to sing Jon Bon Jovi, Blaze of Glory. He sang it so well and so hard and nailed every note which is really, really difficult. A lot of people crash on the rocks of a Bon Jovi song in karaoke bars all over the world. And Matt killed it so bad,” Manganiello recalled.
“I remember coming back the next day and talking to Channing and I was like, ‘You’ve got to get Matt to sing. You’ve got to make Matt sing.’ So I’m so happy that the world will now know.”
What sets Magic Mike XXL apart from Magic Mike is this is truly a bromance picture. Sure, they’ll get the ladies in the seats, just as they did the first time around. But the stars admit that there is something that sets the sequel apart and it’s the addictive camaraderie of the guys.
“I think you have to give a lot of credit to Greg (Jacobs, director). I know that, early on, Greg said, ‘We’re going to get to the end of this movie and people are going to have tears in their eyes when we say goodbye to these guys.’ I was like, ‘We’re making a male stripper movie and people are going to be crying?!’ But, I put it in the back of my head and just kept it in mind,” Manganiello said.
“And sure enough, when we got towards the end, our last day was really hard. It was hard to say goodbye to my friends. I think that to go out in this Diner-esque way, where you don’t know what’s going to happen on Monday morning with these guys, but you care about them and you’re rooting for them, that’s really just a tribute to Greg and the heart that he brought, as a director, to this project. It’s such a perfect direction and evolution from the first movie.”
Tatum felt it on that final day as well. “That last scene was the last scene that we actually shot for the movie. It was the last day, last thing up, so it was pretty nostalgic,” he added.
Tatum, the man whose life story the Magic Mike movies are loosely based upon, reported that the bromance you see on screen is real. It permeates every frame. “I know a lot of people say, ‘Oh, we just loved each other! We really liked hanging out!’ I haven’t been on a movie where people would show up on their days off to watch and support their friends. That doesn’t happen on other movies. It just doesn’t. And ultimately, that’s what happened every day on this thing.”
Tatum was also excited to show off a little more of his and his castmates’ moves this time around, given that the star didn’t believe the focus was on the actual dancing in Magic Mike.
“I think it was a little bit of an oversight on the first one that we couldn’t fit all of the dance routines in the movie. As far as the dance goes, I just wanted to blow it out of the box,” Tatum said.
“The first one was tethered to reality, and the real world male revues are not all that interesting — they kind of suck, to be honest. I was like, ‘If we’re gonna do another one, let’s just go. I don’t want them ever to be able to do a fireman routine on any stage, ever, ever again.’ I think all these guys brought their own thing to it. It was cool. It was fun to craft what they were really interested in doing.”
With the film being so demanding physically, we wondered if there were any injuries to speak of and if so, what it took to power through. Manganiello eagerly answered and shared his war story, and how his real-life love laid down the law after!
“On take one of my finale routine, which we rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, my dance partner did something unrehearsed, and the result was me hearing a loud rip and a pop. It was my bicep. I thought it was a dislocated bone in my arm. The masseuse was trying to work what we thought was a bone back into my arm. And Channing said, ‘You know, I can move my routine up and do it today.’ I just thought, ‘There’s no way. I’m not gonna make it tomorrow. Tomorrow, my arm’s not going to be able to move. If we can go, we’ve gotta go now,’” Manganiello reported.
“It was right out of Rocky,” Tatum interjected. “He was like, ‘No, I’ve got it! Just pop it back in! Just go! I can do it!’
Manganiello came back out and for the next four and a half hours, he did the routine. “[It] involves this sex swing with these monkey bars on top that I had to run and jump on top of. My brain wouldn’t allow me to visualize landing on it because it knew that it would try to stop me, but we made it through,” he said.
“Sofia [Vergara] was there that day. We got back to my trailer and, as soon as the door closed, she said, ‘If I see you at the (expletive) gym tomorrow, we’re done! I’m going to leave you! That’s it!’”