Learning something new. Channing Tatum has picked up many unexpected skills over the years while raising his 10-year-old daughter, Everly.
“I didn’t plan to be a single dad. That was not in the cards [or] in my planning, at the least. And I was pretty nervous. I was like, ‘She’s a girl,’” the actor, 43 who shares his child with ex-wife Jenna Dewan, recalled during a Today interview on Thursday, June 1.
Tatum said he used various resources to learn about being a girl dad, adding, “I was, like, looking up YouTube on how to braid her hair. I didn’t want to be the dad who was bringing her to school looking like she had just slept on the street.”
In response to a question about what kind of a parent he is, the Magic Mike star admitted he was still figuring that out.
“I have no idea, I don’t know. I’m just trying to get by. I think like every other parent, you’re just trying not to mess your kids up. But you know you’re going to,” he continued. “When I knew I was going to have a kid, I was like, ‘Alright, I’m probably going to be the parent — I plan to be the parent — who was probably going to get her in more trouble than I kept her out of.’ And then as they kind of get older, you start to realize, ‘Oh, I have to set boundaries.’”
Tatum was pleasantly surprised by his attempts to set limits with his daughter, saying, “Kids, even though they don’t want boundaries, they do want boundaries. Her anxiety goes down, her stress level goes down when she just understands the rules. And they’re not even your rules, we call them the house rules [such as] you gotta always take your plate to the sink, you gotta pick up your clothes, you gotta brush your teeth — just really normal, simple stuff.”
The Alabama native became a father after four years after exchanging vows with Dewan, 43, in 2009. The former couple, who met on the set of Step Up, announced their separation in 2018 after nearly a decade of marriage. Six months later, the actress filed for divorce and it was finalized in 2019.
Since their split, Dewan moved on with Steve Kazee. The pair, who got engaged in 2020, welcomed their son, Callum, that same year. Tatum, for his part, was linked to Jessie J before sparking a romance with Zoë Kravitz.
Earlier this year, Tatum offered a rare glimpse into what led to his split from Dewan.
“We fought for it for a really long time, even though we both sort of knew that we had sort of grown apart. I think we told ourselves a story when we were young, and we just kept telling ourselves that story, no matter how blatantly life was telling us that we were so different,” he explained to Vanity Fair in January. “But when you’re actually parents you really understand differences between the two of you. Because it is screaming at you all day long. How you parent differently, how you look at the world, how you go through the world.”
The Lost City star said it was “super scary and terrifying” when he transitioned back to single life. “This whole plan that you had literally just turns into sand and goes through your fingers and you’re just like, ‘Oh, s—t. What now?’” he shared at the time.
Tatum went on to credit the breakup for being “exactly” what he needed at that point in his life. “I don’t think I would’ve ever done the work, I think, on myself in the way that I had to do the work on myself to really try to figure out what next,” he noted. “And really, it just started with my daughter. I just dropped everything and just focused on her. And it was truly the best possible thing that I ever could have done. Because in the alone time that I have with just me and her, we’ve become best friends.”
