Three weeks after Roofman hit streaming platforms, stars Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst are reminiscing on filming the true story of convicted criminal Jeff Manchester, which toys they took from the fully-functioning Toys R Us set, and how Tatum felt about shooting that nude scene in the film.
Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman tells the true story of Manchester (Tatum), a criminal who broke into locations like McDonalds’ through their roofs. His biggest robbery was one on a Toys R Us, in which he set up an extensive surveillance system using baby monitors and employee schedules to devise his plan. Dunst stars as Leigh Wainscott, based on the real-life woman with whom Manchester fell in love. The catch? She believed she was dating a man named John Zorn.
Given Manchester has been in prison since 2005 (after escaping in 2004 and attempting two more times in 2009 and 2017), Tatum only had access to the real Manchester through prison calls, 15 minutes at a time, every day for two months.
But speaking to Manchester didn’t prepare Tatum for his nude scene in the film, in which he runs through the Toys R Us naked (leaping over bike racks), and coming face-to-face with costar Peter Dinklage for the first time.
See below for the full Q&A with Tatum and Dunst.
Had you heard of the story before you joined the project?
CHANNING TATUM No, not at all. I’m from over there and I didn’t hear about it. I guess it happened when I was… he’s 10 years older than me, so I wasn’t watching the news or anything like that. When I read the script, I was just like, whoa, this is crazy. And I knew what kind of movies [Derek] makes and if this was a real story, I know he would’ve done all the research.
KIRSTEN DUNST I didn’t know anything about this story and when Derek called, I kind of would’ve done anything with Derek. I’d met him a long time ago and just love the performances that he has in his films, and I just like what he’s into, so I wanted to be a part of that.
Channing, I know that Derek talked to the real Jeff Manchester a lot to prepare for the movie. Were you able to speak with him to prepare?
TATUM First, I just read the script. He had done almost four years of talking to Jeff — him and Kirt Gunn, the other writer — and so I did as much as I possibly could for them to prepare me, and then I was like, “all right, I think I’m ready to talk to Jeff.” And yeah, so he calls you, you can’t call him. He’s still in a Supermax prison. You get 15 minutes at a time. And we got into a rhythm and I talked to him for every day for about two months. You’re trying to read into what or why and everything, and so you have all these questions, and then as soon as I talked to him, all the questions went away. I just wanted to get to know this guy because he really is so easy to talk to. He’s so hopeful and optimistic, which was a bit of a shocker to me. He’s so mentally strong or something, I don’t even know how to describe him to you, but I guarantee if you talk to him even once or twice, you would just come off the phone just being like, why did I like that guy so much?
DUNST He and Leigh both have a very strong spiritual, genuine spirituality that really carries them through life with a lot of goodness.
TATUM I fully agree with that. And I don’t know, he is a bit of a kid, but he’s really, really bright. He’ll be telling you a story about himself, and then he’ll feel like he’s been talking for too long, and he’ll just be like, “You have a daughter. Didn’t you say at one point that she loved Irish Celtic dancing? Where did she get that? That’s kind of how I felt, I didn’t know how I got into this!” And then he’ll just know some sort of thing or remember some sort of thing that you said, and he just makes you feel so held as you hang out and talk to him over time. It’s really a fascinating experience.
Well, that’s a duality of the movie, right? He commits these crimes, but you still root for him even though he’s manipulating people and lying to them.
TATUM The scene… It was after the first time he meets Leigh at the church when he brings the toys and he’s walking away from the church and he is going back to the toy store and he’s like, people liked John. He didn’t want to be Jeff. So he had created this person, the best version of himself, and people liked him. That is one of my favorite parts of the movie, just because we all want to just create some person that we don’t know. We have probably so many people inside of us in a way, different versions of us, and we just want people to like that person or not to not like them, I guess. And I think that being alone in that toy store and then all of a sudden going into that warm church with everybody being so sweet and open and loving, he was just completely intoxicated by it.
Kirsten, were you able to speak to the real Leigh Wainscott before or during production?
DUNST I met Leigh. She came to set a few times. She’s in the movie, but in the beginning, Derek had interviewed her and we had talked about her. I’m just happy that she liked my performance, so that’s the most important thing. But I just felt like getting the essence of her and really the way she handled this situation with so much grace was really what I focused on when I thought about her. They really fell in love. This wasn’t just a fling. So that was really important, to carry all those things of how hard it is to be a single mother and to even indulge in this and how complicated all of that is. As long as she says I did her right, I feel good.
I understand Derek is not a fan of rehearsing a lot. I wondered if that was a unique challenge for you both.
DUNST I love not rehearsing. I love when people are like, let’s just go for it and capture it, whatever happens.
TATUM Also, just, even if you genuinely want to rehearse it, just shoot it. On this movie, we were shooting on film, but most movies don’t shoot on film anymore, so just shoot it. You never know what’s going to happen, and if you fall down, if you trip, that could be the best part of the scene. You just don’t know. There’s so much stuff that is in the movie that wasn’t planned. It wasn’t written in the script and we just sort of accidentally did it or found it.
DUNST It also depends on the filmmaker. With Derek… that’s his magic. But then I’ve worked with people where the rehearsal really works and that’s their magic of how they construct things. Derek’s rehearsals are actually improvs. We did rehearse, but it’s not rehearsal. Me and my girls [in the film] would go grocery shopping and cook, and we invited [fellow Toys R Us employee] Otis over, who’s played by Emory Cohen. We’d invite him over for dinner and we basically had interactions, or I took Lily [Collias, who plays Leigh’s elder daughter in the film ] out for driving lessons. We mostly just laid down foundations of family dynamics and friendships or work dynamics. So that felt more authentic and lived in, but no running of dialogue.
It’s interesting you say that. I spoke to your production designer Inbal Weinberg, and she told me that everything was built out in the store. They didn’t want you to feel restricted in Toys R Us in terms of where you could walk, and so the floors had to be consistent, which is very interesting. And I imagine that scene where you pick your toys for Jeff’s hideout was very much part of that improv, right?
TATUM It’s so hard to explain in such a short amount of time. I mean from tile to tile, to bulb to bulb, to aisle to aisle, from toy to toy, there had to be [shelves] three toys deep, and if there was a box, there better be something in it, because if I decided to open up the box and build something, it better be in there and it better be accurate. And I don’t know how she did it. It still is a mystery to me.
DUNST: The whole budget went to that.
TATUM: The entire thing. I mean, it really did.
DUNST: And the actual film.
How many M&M’s did you eat?
TATUM: Too many. I was fasting a lot on the movie… He was a very thin guy, and man, having just chocolate in your stomach after not eating in the mornings was… you just wanted to throw up. It was a horrible feeling. Anytime [Derek would] be like, “Maybe just eat another one.” I’m like, “Please don’t make me eat anymore.” Usually I would love it.
What’s the item or toy in the store that you both would gravitated towards?
TATUM I actually got the bear. My daughter… I think that might’ve been the reason why I ended up picking up the bear. I had shot that [scene] after my daughter had come to set. She had only come for three days while we were filming during the entire two and a half months that we were there, and she picked up this giant bear and was just playing with it. And so I think I picked it up later, not even really thinking it was going to be in the movie, but we were riding around and we were having competitions to see who could heely the farthest and who could do the coolest tricks. And it was just hilarious. But the things that I took are the bear, and I obviously took Gambit. Gambit and Deadpool and Cable. I took Bishop as well.
DUNST: I stole my kids some pajamas and some Swedish Fish and Friends. I had never seen the “And Friends” part of Swedish Fish, have you? And they still talk about it. “Remember when you got Swedish Fish and Friends?” They have friends apparently, the fish. And also, I think I’d set up my chair a lot by the puffy box video cassettes, how we used to have video cassettes in the big puffy boxes with the poster on it.
What was the most challenging scene for you?
TATUM One of the most challenging scenes was at the end of the movie. Kirsten had gone, we had done our big scene at the end of the movie and she had left. She was done with the movie, and she left me in a prison with a bunch of actual prisoners, and then I had to do my wrap-up with all real prisoners that either were getting out and processing out or had been out. And that was really tough. There was a scene where I had to act with them and tell them this story, and I don’t know why it was so tough. I guess because they had all really been in, and I felt like I didn’t really get to go and really spend time inside of a real prison and sort of get a sense of what that would really be other than shooting in one. And I don’t know, it was tough to really believe what I was saying at times, when you’re really looking across from somebody that had been in and out of prisons for 27 years or something and you’re just like, wow, alright, this is tough to believe at this moment. But they were all incredibly sweet and helping me and really giving me perspective. I could ask them anything. One guy was like, “it’s not that bad in there.” I was like, “what? What did you say?” He’s like, “jail is actually worse than prison. Prison, it’s like being at a shitty camp.” And I was like, “huh, well, I don’t want to go either way. I’m good.”
DUNST I don’t really have a toughest scene. You know what? Weirdly, one scene that was hard for me to get into was when I was in the kitchen and fighting with my daughters, and then Channing had a full speech about getting a car. You called it a beater. That scene was a weird nut to crack.
TATUM The thing that threw that scene off is they were trying to do something language-wise that was almost like a joke, but it wasn’t landing. It was like, “you need a beater.” And you were like, “to beat her?” It was supposed to sound like “you need to beat her.” And everybody was like, “Wait, what?” It was a weird left of the scene that didn’t need to be there. And it took us a while to end up being like, all right, we’re taking that out and just stay in the drama of the family.
Channing, you’ve talked a little bit about about how you felt doing the nude scene. I imagine Derek and the crew wanted to make you feel as comfortable as possible. And I understand Derek offered to blur the footage too, right? I was curious how those conversations transpired.
TATUM I think everyone else did want me to feel comfortable, but Derek never, ever wanted me to feel comfortable. I think because he’s never comfortable. I was naive, I guess, and thought that there was a plan to shoot this in a certain way. I was like, yeah, Derek really does his homework and he’s got a plan. And I was like, “So, how are we going to do this? We’re not not going to see stuff. I got nothing on.” And he’s like, “we’re going to figure it out.” I’m like, “What do you mean you don’t know? We’re going to see stuff if you don’t have a plan.” He’s like, “Yeah, I was thinking a oner?” And I’m like, “Nope, that’s not going to work. We’re definitely seeing stuff,” and long story long now, Peter Dinklage was so funny and fun in that scene. That was our first scene together, our first real interaction with each other. Which is odd. Not the best time to meet somebody when everything’s out there for the world to see. But it ultimately was fun. But you just kind of have to just rip the bandaid and just say, “All right, I don’t know. I don’t care. Let’s just get it. Roll the camera.” I wish we only did it twice. We did it a lot. A lot. A lot. But then after the fact, Derek was like, “Well, what do you want me to do with it? Because you could see stuff.” You couldn’t do the whole oner and shoot it the way they wanted to shoot without seeing stuff. And ultimately, I don’t really know what he did. I don’t know. He was at one point going to put a black bar over the thing in the movie, and blur stuff out. And I’m like, “Dude, don’t make it weird. You’re going to take people out of the movie. Don’t do that.” And he’s like, “Well, what do you want me to do, just make it go away?” I’m like, “No, don’t make it go away. I don’t want to look like a Ken doll. There’s nothing there. That’s horrible. I don’t want to look like I have a mound or something. It’s a terrible idea!” I was like, “I don’t know. Don’t even tell me what you do. Just don’t make it look weird. Don’t make it look like I don’t have something, but don’t make it NC 17.”
DUNST And then he was like “make it bigger!”
TATUM Exactly. Just hit the “enlarge” button.
How do you feel about the finished product?
TATUM It was fine. It was great.
DUNST You can’t see anything.
TATUM: You could feel it… that’s the wrong word. You could feel it more than see it. Wrong phrase… Feel it more than see it. That’s my brand of movies. That’s my mantra. The Chan-tra.