Channing Tatum says even before he worked with Gina Carano on Haywire, he thought she was a "lovely girl." Tatum met Carano prior to their time together on Haywire during a Strikeforce fight (a friend of his was fighting), and he'd followed her Mixed Martial Arts career and considered himself a fan. Still, playing opposite a feature film newcomer as she tackles her first starring role could have made any actor uneasy.

But Tatum had faith Carano would be able to handle anything director Steven Soderbergh threw at her.

At the LA press day for the Relativity Media release, Tatum recalled how he went into the film believing that with Carano handling the fight scenes, Haywire would be one of the first times audiences could see a real female fighter step out of the ring and hold her own as a convincing action star.

"She can really do this stuff. There's no faking it. She only fakes it, because she has too," said Tatum, recalling their fight scenes. "She's one of the best dancer-athletes that I've gotten to move with - and that goes to different martial artist to football players, basketball players. I mean, she's one to the best athletes I've gotten to move with."

However, having to do fight scenes with a woman was something Tatum wasn't initially comfortable with. He's a gentleman and had to overcome the idea of hitting a woman. "I come from the South and you don't hit women; you don't even cuss at them or anything, even though people do.

She had to call me the P-word to make me hit her. I'll let you fill that in... I had to smash a ketchup bottle on her face. And it was so alarming to see a beautiful girl sitting across from me, and we had to do it to see if it was going to break, and how hard I was going to have to do it, and I was going to do it and she had to make fun of me, and make fun of my manhood to do it. I finally did it and I realized I did it way too hard, and her face came back like that."

Tatum added, "You see everywhere you go two men fighting. You see it in the bars. You see it on TV. You see it in movies. You see it everywhere. You very rarely see a man and a women fight, and even more rare a women beating the hell out of some men. And it was kind of a pleasure."

And while Tatum knew going in that Carano wouldn't have any problem with the fight scenes and stunt work, he was surprised at Carano's acting ability. "I kind of knew what she was going to bring in terms of athleticism, but I was truly shocked at her ability to really...I wish I could say I was as clear with my intention in acting as she was. "

Tatum says Carano has a calm confidence and an unawareness of self that made her performance really fresh. "We live so much in our head. I think we can get lost up there, actors, because you always have to be looking in at yourself. That was brilliant," explained Tatum.

And Haywire wound up being just the beginning of the relationship between Tatum and director Steven Soderbergh. Tatum had researched Soderbergh's work (the way he runs his sets and how he handles actors), but after actually working with the Oscar-winning filmmaker, he calls him a "smooth and confident" filmmaker. "I got to learn a lot about freedom and taking it on your own, because he hires the people he wants to hire and he expects you to bring something that he's not expecting. And he trusts that your judgments are correct, and from that it kind of really liberated me."

And in fact the two hit it off so well, they collaborated on a film after they finished up Haywire. Tatum described how Magic Mike, also known as their stripper film, came to be: "We were sitting over a beer and I told him that I was a stripper for like eight months when I was like 19 or 18, and he said that would be a great movie. And I was like, 'I want to make a movie out of it.' And he's like, 'Yeah, you should write it.' And I'm like, 'Yeah Soderbergh, Steven Soderbergh, I'll go write that.' And then cut to like three months later, in an interview he said that he would direct it if it ever did become a movie. Then I called him up and I was like, 'How much bullsh-t is in this article?'"

"He was like, 'As serious as bone's spur, we should sit down.' And we sat down at Carney's over a hot dog, ironically enough, and we decided to do it. My business partner is a writer, and he's like, 'Your buddy should write it with you, and we should both finance it. You should act in it, I'll direct it, and we'll do it in the next two months.'"

Tatum said his buddy wrote it in one month, and they've just recently finished up reshoots. "We're in post now and it will be out on June 26th, I think. Hopefully we'll keep it going. I'm trying not to let him go painting any time soon [a reference to Soderbergh's threats to retire from directing to take up painting]. I'm trying to keep him going."

So, what was it like for Tatum to revisit his stripper experiences? "Weird, it was really weird," replied Tatum. "It was as comfortable as I remembered it. I think I was 19, a little kind of dumb and crazy, a lot crazier than I am now. Going back to the town that I did it in, and walking the streets, like Ybor City is like this one historical place in Tampa that all the clubs are at. Being in the same nightclubs that I was probably really intoxicated [in] was a really kind of interesting revisiting. Walking the same weird little alleys and doing it sober this time was fun."

Asked who was the most competitive on the sets of Haywire and Magic Mike, Tatum answered, "This set, I don't think we were very competitive. I knew what would happen if there was any completion. It was clear. I wasn't getting into that. On Magic Mike...I don't know how to answer that. There's a healthy competition; it's really, really naked to walk out in front of a group of girls naked so you get real reactions from them. So when you walk out and take it all off, you want to get a good reaction from them. It's really hard to be sexy when you're naked as guy. Like girls can just walk and be hot, and guys you don't really want to move a lot. You want to keep it cool. It was a very eye opening experience, because I had done it before for real."

"It was kind of weird getting back on the horse. And some of these guys would come into the rehearsals, and I'd be like, 'Today's the day. Take those clothes off, brother.' They'd be like, 'What?' 'Oh yeah, it's going to happen sooner or later so you have to get used to moving naked.' It was so much fun. We had a barrel of laughs."