Channing Tatum is opening up about the heartbreak of his divorce from Jenna Dewan—nearly a year after it was finalized.
In a new Variety cover story published September 2, the 45-year-old actor reflected on co-parenting their 12-year-old daughter, Everly, while promoting his latest film, Roofman. At one point, Tatum discussed playing a character who misses his child, which prompted him to candidly address his own split from Dewan, 44.
“I know for a fact I’m able to understand it,” he said. “Jenna and I are good now, but it was a painful break to have that fall apart, especially being so young. We tried to keep it together, tried for a year and a half, but we knew it was.… Not to go into all that. It’s in the past. But it’s really tough not to have your daughter half the time. I wish I could just have her all the time.”
While Tatum, who was engaged to Zoë Kravitz for a year before their split last October, refrained from sharing more intimate details of the divorce, he didn’t shy away from admitting the struggles of co-parenting.
“It’s in the past,” he repeated. “But it’s really tough not to have your daughter half the time. I wish I could just have her all the time.”
He also reflected on how life experiences, including heartbreak, shape his craft. “I’ve lived six or seven different lives,” Tatum told *Variety*. “Life gives you fuel. If you’ve really been heartbroken, and really been in pain and felt real, true aloneness … I’ve experienced enough life that I have something to offer. The technique and the ability to actually deliver.”
Tatum isn’t alone in publicly reflecting on their marriage. Jenna, who shares son Callum, 5, and daughter Rhiannon, 15 months, with fiancé Steve Kazee, spoke earlier this year about the impact of their public split.
“In 2024, especially, I learned a lot about myself, my resilience, and my voice,” Jenna wrote in a January 22 essay for *InStyle*. “I learned to let go of over-accommodating in my relationships and to sit with uncomfortability. What it really means to trust.”
She added that their 12-year marriage simply wasn’t meant to last. “Sometimes things break because you don’t fit in that vessel anymore,” Jenna explained, “and that’s okay.”
For both Channing and Jenna, co-parenting remains a necessary, though challenging, part of life. “You shift and evolve and you adapt to how life is presenting itself to you,” Jenna continued, highlighting the realities of raising children while navigating life after divorce.
