Channing Tatum was well prepared for his role as a dad in Josephine as he has a 12-year-old daughter of his own.
Josephine follows an eight-year-old child who witnesses a brutal sexual assault in a park, and how her parents navigate the traumatic situation.
Tatum shared an incident from his daughter’s preschool years which helped him tap into his role as Damien.
“I have a 12-year-old, and I was a 12-year-old myself at some point in my life as well. Thankfully, I didn’t have this event happen to my 12-year-old self,” he said. “But I remember, with my daughter when she was in preschool, I got called to school because my daughter got into a fight.”
Whe he reached the school, the principal pulled him aside to tell him she was proud of his daughter Evie for defending a friend gaainst a violent boy.
“She’s like, ‘Hey, I need to tell you I’m proud of Evie’. My daughter’s name is Evie. ‘I’m proud of Evie. I can’t say that in there, because we’re not allowed, we can’t have fighting at the school,” he recounted.
“Apparently, there was a boy that was being very physical with them, and she told the teacher. The teacher scolded the boy, and then eventually, the boy did something to her best friend, and she spider monkey tackled this kid to the ground and bit his ear,” The Vow star recalled.
“I’m in the office, and like, ‘F**k yeah.’… I took her to get an ice cream right afterwards,” he said, before referring to a scene in Josephine.
“That conversation that I had with Josephine underneath the bridge is a conversation that I’ve had with my daughter. You will never be in trouble with me, if you protect yourself, if someone is doing something you don’t like…. don’t f**k with my daughter. She listened and doesn’t suffer fools,” Tatum shared.
Josephine has already premiered to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award prizes.
