Channing Tatum is haunted by a Guillermo del Toro fairy movie—not one of the films the Oscar winner actually made, but an opportunity he let slip by. “One of the biggest mistakes of my career: Guillermo del Toro wanted to do Beauty And The Beast, his version of the Beast,” Tatum reveals in a new interview with Vanity Fair. “And I’d just had a baby, I was on a movie that was absolutely killing me, and the script wasn’t totally there yet. I was just in a place in my head that I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this right now.’ It was the biggest mistake, because I’m the biggest Guillermo fan ever. And I think Guillermo doing Beauty And The Beast would’ve been the sickest movie ever.”
It isn’t the first time Tatum turned down a potentially career-changing role. Back in the early 2000s, his eventual Roofman director Derek Cianfrance offered him the lead in a project that would eventually become Blue Valentine. In a joint interview with Variety, Tatum admitted he didn’t even remember declining the role at first. “I think I blocked it out because I probably, on some level, regret it,” the actor said. “When I really look back on that moment, I was scared of [the role], because I hadn’t really lived it.”Â
Cianfrance moved on to Ryan Gosling, and Guillermo del Toro moved on to other projects, never realizing his vision for Beauty And The Beast. (del Toro was going to direct a version for Warner Bros., with Emma Watson attached to star; he dropped out in 2014, and she ended up in Disney’s live-action remake instead.) “He’s got a billion other things that he wants to do. He’s such a creator,” Channing Tatum says to Vanity Fair. “I’ll probably never forgive myself on that one, but I hope we get to work together one day. Like Derek and I did. I think Blue Valentine time was always supposed to be Ryan [Gosling]’s. At that point in my life, it was such a sad story, and I had not had a sad relationship like that. I just don’t think I could have done it.”
His Roofman co-star Kirsten Dunst observes wisely: “Some things I’ve not done have been great opportunities for other people, and some things that other people haven’t done have been great opportunities for me. So I honestly believe that the right creatives come together. I don’t have any regrets.”
