SANDRA& CHANNING

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum on their kids, their career choices and the wildly different life paths that intersected in the middle of the jungle in The Lost City.

C“WE WANT ESCAPISM MORE THAN EVER NOW.” —Channing Tatum

hanning Tatum wasn’t sure what to expect working with Sandra Bullock for the first time in their new jungle-comedy adventure, The Lost City, which Bullock also produced. “You think they’re not going to be any fun because they’re the boss, right?” he says. But he quickly discovered that his “boss” and co-star could shift from reviewing bottom-line location costs to laughing her head off. And boy, could she turn it on once the cameras started rolling, running at full tilt up and down a hill.

His co-star laughs. “There was one run up the hill,” Bullock says, though she struggled—in a sequined onesie and high heels, no less—to keep up with workout-happy Tatum. “I was dying a small death inside, [but] I was not about to let him see it!”

Today the two are on even ground, Zooming with Parade from their homes. Bullock, 57, who is mom to son Louis, 12, and daughter Laila, 8, is backlit by a bright window that’s creating a halo around her head. Tatum, 41, father to daughter Everly, 8 (with his ex-wife, actress Jenna Dewan), wears a beanie as he talks from his cozy, wood-walled cabin. They shoot jokes back and forth with each other and talk about their shared passions for parenting and producing their

own projects. But they are opposites in many ways—just like their characters.

OPPOSITES ATTRACT

In The Lost City (in theaters March 25), Bullock plays reclusive romance novelist Loretta Sage, who is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe) to find the treasure in the lost city from her latest novel. Tatum plays Alan, her novel’s hunky cover model, who—determined to live up to her book’s hero, Dash—sets off to rescue her, sweeping them both into an adventure straight out of one of Loretta’s books (and into a hilarious cameo by Brad Pitt). They filmed in the Dominican Republic last summer, which was “sweaty,” says Tatum. And while it was sometimes a rough shoot, he feels the movie couldn’t come at a better time: “We want escapism more than ever now.” Bullock calls The Lost City a throwback, like the movies Hollywood was making decades ago. Indeed, the story is

reminiscent of Romancing the Stone from the 1980s. “I knew how fun it would be to play these misfits—oil and vinegar— stuck in a situation,” she says.

Tatum says their big, broad characters were so extreme that after his scenes he kept asking the directors, “Is this working? Are you gonna be able to use any of this?” But he and Bullock connected, he says, with the hearts of their characters, whose “neuroses come from very emotional cornerstones.”

Bullock loved playing Loretta. “I like how tight, wound-up and shut off she is,” she says—then stops. “Channing, don’t even!” she says, warning him off making any real-life comparisons. “I hear your brain all the way over there!”

While Bullock was spinning a lot of plates as a producer, Tatum says they still had time to enjoy watching their kids play together on set. The daughters already knew each other well. They attended the same preschool several years ago, which was where Bullock and Tatum first met.

KID STUFF

Tatum, a new dad at the time, says Bullock was “a force of mama bear,” and he recalls wanting to download everything she knew about parenting. “I felt like, is there a Fire Stick or something that you can plug into my brain and I can learn all the stuff?” Bullock remembers how their daughters “were trying to kill each other because they’re both A-type badass chicks.” Bullock and Tatum’s own childhoods, meanwhile, were worlds apart.

She was raised in Germany and Austria with her younger sister, Gesine, and attended a German school until the family relocated to Virginia when she was in high school. Her mother, Helga, and her father, John, were both opera singers. “My father was a Renaissance man” who went to Juilliard and made records when he was younger, she says, and he also served in the U.S. Army. Both parents taught voice. But her mom—with whom Bullock appeared in some operas— pushed her daughters even more. “Our mother really raised us as strong women,” she says. “‘You don’t need men. Make your own money. It’s about art.’ She really hammered that home.”

Tatum grew up all-American: Born in Alabama, he was raised from the age of 6 in the Pascagoula, Miss., bayou with his sister, Paige, before moving to Tampa, Fla., in the fifth grade. He says he wasn’t a good student, but he loved playing football and running around “just getting into trouble.” His mom, Kay, was a bank teller, and his father, Glenn, was a roofer, until he got hurt on the job and began selling building products. Neither of them was into show business, Tatum says. But he appreciates now how exposed he was to “very normal stories, very real stories, typical of the American experience.” With no real ambition to be in movies, he says, “I got lucky—really, really lucky—and got some jobs before I knew even the first thing about acting.”

He began his career in music videos, on TV and in films like Coach Carter before he broke out in 2006 in the comedy She’s the Man and the dance film Step Up (where he met his former wife, Dewan). He rocketed to the next level in 2012 with Magic Mike, loosely based on his experiences as a nightclub stripper. After starring in the 2017 crime caper Logan Lucky, Tatum took an almost four-year break. “I was the fat kid at the buffet for a little while,” he says of his work schedule until then, “just doing everything and anything fun and cool.” He says raising his daughter made him reassess what he wanted in life. (He and Dewan split in 2018.)

“Every movie,” he says, “every life experience just changes you, and you have to re-center and figure out, ‘Is this still what I want to do?’”This February, he not only starred in and produced the film Dog but also made his directorial debut,

alongside his producing partner, Reid Carolin. And he’s now working on the upcoming film Magic Mike’s Last Dance.

Bullock’s career rose steadily. After majoring in drama at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., she moved to New York City and starred in a slew of TV shows and films before she got her big break beside Keanu Reeves in Speed (1994). She spun her own gold in While You Were Sleeping, Miss Congeniality and The Proposal. After her role in the 2009 drama The Blind Side won her an Academy Award for Best Actress, she costarred in the action film Ocean’s 8, the Netflix postapocalyptic horror hit Bird Box and 2021’s dark drama The Unforgivable.

But the career choice she’s most proud of was a part that earned her another Academy Award nomination: Gravity, the 2013 space drama that she filmed after her split from her then-husband, reality star Jesse James. Playing astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone on her first shuttle mission “was sort of like a rebirth,” she says, “a beautiful sort of ass-kicker on many levels.” The experience made her feel like, “You know what? I got this. I’m fine. I can handle anything.”

“I KNEW HOW FUN IT WOULD BE TO PLAY THESE MISFITS—OIL AND VINEGAR—STUCK IN A SITUATION.” —Sandra Bullock

‘I CAN HANDLE ANYTHING’

Bullock—who has been dating photographer Bryan Randall for seven years—continues to set a high bar for herself. But no matter the course of her career, her family is always first. “My art comes second to my babies every single day of the week. Nothing is more important than them.”

And this is where the two actors align most deeply: They’re grounded by their kids. At home, Tatum—who began dating actress Zoë Kravitz after she cast him in her upcoming directorial debut, the psychological thriller Pussy Island—is teaching his daughter to box and indulges her by letting her put makeup on him. “Any excuse,” he says, “to make a mess and just destroy something in my house.”

So after making it out of the jungle in The Lost City, what adventures are next? “I would just like to go on more adventures, period,” says Tatum. “I don’t care where or what kind, as long as we’re not sitting home safe and complacent.”

“Chan’s more adventurous than I am, and he’s braver than I am,” says Bullock. “I’m fearful. And you’ve lectured me on it!” she tells her co-star. “I’m getting there.” But she agrees that almost everyone is yearning to get out into the world more, on real-life adventures, since the pandemic clipped our wings. And she wants to do just that with her kids. “I feel they’ve given me a childhood that I didn’t get to experience,” she says. “I want them to lead. I want them to inspire me where to go.”