Channing Tatum as stars Jeffrey Manchester in the unbelievable true story based on a former Army Ranger and struggling father who turns to robbing McDonald’s restaurants by cutting holes in their roofs, earning him the nickname: Roofman. After escaping prison, he secretly lives inside a Toys “R” Us for six months, surviving undetected while planning his next move. In ROOFMAN, he falls for a divorced mom played by Kirsten Dunst and his double life begins to unravel. We sat down with both Tatum and Dunst to talk about motivations, self worth, and grace versus judgment.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: This is such a complex and interesting story. I absolutely loved it. And one of the things I think is so interesting, Channing, is even though Jeffrey is a criminal at his core, it grabs you to know that his motivation is to provide for his family and to be respected by his kids. Talk a little bit about that.
Channing Tatum: Yeah, I mean, look, I think Derek said it really well. He’s never met a hero. He has never met a villain. He’s just met humans. And I’ve always loved just playing characters or even seeing characters or even people in life that you could take a snapshot out of their life and you could judge them really harshly on it. If you take a good one, they’re a good person. If you take a bad one at a bad moment, they’re a terrible person. But giving understanding of why Jeff made all these wild extreme decisions, making people understand is my job. And I hope that people do have empathy and some sort of sympathy for him and understanding.
FE: Well, one of the things, speaking of judgment, Kirsten, I feel like your character was grace personified. Whether it’s her co-worker or the kids at Christmas…
Kirsten Dunst: She’s such a good Christian woman.
FE: Even holding a space for Jeffrey to be seen. Right?
KD: Yeah, but also I think their connection was really real and that’s why she could deal with that pain and also be a bigger person about the entire thing because they left such an impact he did on their lives. So she still talks about him with so much love. They still talk.
FE: The movie was so funny… thank you for giving us a chance to laugh, just so we need that right now. But one of the things that I love too is kind of this deep conversation of where we place our self-worth. I think your character says to Jeffrey at one point, you are enough. We don’t have to buy affection or perform for affection. Maybe talk a little bit about that — in Roofman!
CT: I think if we all said that to our significant others or just anyone in our lives really more, I think we’d all probably be better off. I mean, just even hearing you say it then I was just like… because you just do. It’s hard to remind yourself that it is, because now everything’s about what can you provide? Especially I think as someone brought up the masculinity thing, which I was not ever really thinking about in the movie, but maybe there’s a conversation there that Jeff was the man and he felt like he needed to provide the house and provide the bike, do all the stuff. But I don’t know. I think I’ll let people sort of interpret that how they want to, but I know Jeff, all he wanted was just to be loved and that’s it.
KD: It’s what every human wants.
FE: The peanut M&Ms, how many did you have…
CT: Too many.
FE: Did you get to pick or was that his candy of choice?
CT: I had to go with that candy. I was also fasting and trying to lose weight because Jeff was a very lean guy and there was only once where I was like, please, Derek, don’t make me eat any more peanuts. When you fast and don’t eat anything and you just eat chocolate, you feel like trash…
KD: Gives me an instant headache just thinking about it.
ROOFMAN hits theatres October 10
