Channing: My Gambit accent isn’t ready

Channing Tatum hasn’t found the right accent for Gambit yet.

The 35-year-old actor is starring as the superhero in the upcoming X-Men spinoff. But Channing admits he is still working on getting the character perfect for the movie.

Gambit has a thick Cajun accent in the comic books, and Channing is trying his utmost to live up to the characterisation.

“I’m from the south, so I know who to go to to find the accent,” Channing said in the interview with Digital Spy. “I haven’t found ‘the guy’ yet, because generally that’s how I do accents. I’ll find the person I want to sound like and not just do a generic Cajun accent. So I haven’t found the guy yet.”

Channing was speaking about his role in Gambit as he embarked on a press tour for his new film Magic Mike XXL. But while he was happy to speak about some aspects of the movie, he remained cagey when asked about his character’s costume.

“That’s kind of the fun part, to massage it,” he said. “You can’t just, like, do it how people think. You want to give it some base of reality. If you do do it, you got to make it sort of relative to the reality.”

There has already been several X-Men spinoff films, centering around Hugh Jackman’s character Wolverine. The movies have often featured characters from the X-Men films, such as Jean Grey and Storm. However, Channing is still in the dark as to whether some familiar faces will be making an appearance in his film.

“This is a standalone movie and it’s the story of Gambit and we’ll probably gradually integrate that character into the X-Men universe as we go,” he said. “As far as what characters from the X-Men universe make it into the movie — we’re not exactly sure yet, so we’re figuring it out. It’s still at the script stage… It’s his story in New Orleans.”