Channing Tatum Hated Doing 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra'

The "Magic Mike" star blasts the 2009 blockbuster.

ByABC News
June 24, 2015, 10:50 AM

— -- Howard Stern thought "G.I. Joe" was the big, superstar moment in Channing Tatum's career. Boy was he wrong. To the shock jock's surprise, the A-list actor told him he actually wishes he never did the film.

"I'll be honest, I f----- hate that movie," Tatum told Stern on his show about the 2009 blockbuster. "I was pushed into doing that movie."

Tatum said after being featured in "Coach Carter," they offered him a 3-picture deal for "G.I. Joe."

Slideshow: Check Out Other Stars on Set

"As a young [actor], you're like 'Oh my God, that sounds amazing!'" he explained. "Time goes by and you get other jobs and you are building your quote and things happen and you start to have like a dream job you want to go do, and the studio calls up, 'Hey, we got a movie for you.'"

Tatum, 35, said he loved the series growing up and wanted to play Snake Eyes.

"'No, you're playing Duke,'" Tatum says they said.

"The script wasn't any good," he added.

Since Tatum was a fan of the old cartoon that he watched every morning as a kid, he didn't want to do a movie he thought wasn't up to its standards.

After Stern told Tatum that Mark Wahlberg was originally supposed to play Duke but he was too old for the part, he said, "Maybe I should have done my Wahlberg impression for the whole movie, the movie might have been better, my acting would have been better, too."

Tatum also spoke about his ADD that he said he was diagnosed with as a kid and compelled him not to go to college on a football scholarship.

"Anytime I sat still in a classroom, I would fall asleep," he said. "Dislexia was probably a little bit of it [too]. When I spell, I'l jump letters."

Tatum said he took medication for it at 12 years old because he was told, "Everything that speeds a normal person up would slow him down."

"It made me a bit of a zombie," he said of the medication. "It did the job, I got A's and things, but all the fun went out of me."