Thanks to his love of the character Gambit — and now his time playing him in the MCU — Channing Tatum has gotten pretty good at whipping playing cards. At this point, he’s so good that his “Roofman” co-star Kirsten Dunst was legitimately stunned when she saw it in person.
Sitting down with MTV ahead of their new film, Tatum once again gushed about the opportunity to play Gambit at all, let alone reprise the character in “Avengers: Doomsday” next year.
“It’s bonkers,” he said. “I only wanted to be in ‘X-Men,’ much less now I get to be in ‘Avengers,’ so it’s just wild.”
Naturally, the actor was handed a deck of cards to show off his skills. Tatum opted to aim at a camera off-screen, and when he let the card fly, Dunst let out an audible “Ooh!” as the card made contact.
“You didn’t even jump!” she marveled, immediately imitating the stoicism of the camera operator.
“I got it right in the lens,” Tatum bragged.
“That’s cool! Yeah you did!” Dunst replied excitedly.
Card-throwing is, of course, Gambit’s specialty. No, throwing cards isn’t a superpower, but the ability to manipulate kinetic energy is, and that’s what Gambit can do. As such, he manipulates the energy to dramatically accelerate the kinetic energy of object, and his object of choice just so happens to be playing cards.
Tatum made his debut as the character in “Deadpool & Wolverine” last July, years after desperately trying to get a Gambit film off the ground. Shortly thereafter, Tatum posted an emotional thank you to Ryan Reynolds online, crediting the “Deadpool” actor with getting Gambit to screen.
“I thought I had lost Gambit forever. But he fought for me and Gambit. I will owe him probably forever,” Tatum wrote at the time. “Cause I’m not sure how I could ever do something that would be equal to what this has meant to me. I love ya buddy.”
You can watch the moment in the video above.
