Channing Tatum Responds to Amanda Bynes' Claim She Launched His Career: 'I Love Her'
Channing Tatum apparently did not mind one bit when Amanda Bynes took some credit for his success.
“I totally fought for Channing [to get cast in] that movie [She’s the Man] because he wasn’t famous yet,” Bynes, 32, told Paper Magazine in a recently published interview.
When Entertainment Tonight asked Tatum about Bynes’ statement at London’s Magic Mike Live premiere on Wednesday, the actor, 38, had a sweet response: “I love her.”
He has fond memories of costarring in the 2006 film with Bynes. “She was just so alive,” he recalled to ET. “You never knew what was gonna come out of her mouth. She was just on fire. I haven’t seen her in so long. I love her, and I just hope she’s doing [well].”
Bynes told Paper she had to work to make sure Tatum got the job. “He’d just done a Mountain Dew commercial and I was like, ‘This guy’s a star — every girl will love him!’ ” she said to Paper. “But [the producers] were like, ‘He’s so much older than all of you!’ And I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter! Trust me!’ “
Was Tatum aware that Bynes went to bat for him? “I guess she sort of told me,” he told ET.
In the Paper interview, Bynes opened up about her past drug usage, which began at age 16 with marijuana. “Later on it progressed to doing molly and ecstasy,” Bynes said. “[I tried] cocaine three times but I never got high from cocaine. I never liked it. It was never my drug of choice.”
“I definitely abused Adderall,” she added to the outlet.
The drugs led her to announce her retirement from acting after she watched herself in 2010’s Easy A. “I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it,” Bynes told the magazine. “I was high on marijuana when I saw that but for some reason it really started to affect me.”
Bynes has now been sober for four years, is studying at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and wants to return to acting — and Tatum is thrilled to watch her find her footing again.
“I’m so happy she’s killing it again and back on the right,” Tatum told ET. “She’s so talented and so special, and she’s been doing it. I think it’s so impossible when you start at such a young age to keep perspective. It’s tough.”
