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When Beyonce stormed the stage on the season two premiere of Lip Sync Battle, surprising both viewers and contestants Channing Tatum and his wife, Jenna Dewan Tatum, the video went viral.
Still, no one was more shocked that he pulled it off than Tatum himself. On Thursday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the 35-year-old actor revealed how his collaboration with Bey happened.
“I had never met her before,” Tatum told host Ellen DeGeneres. “I won’t even tell you what I had to do to essentially get her assistant’s phone number.”
Tatum said when he got wind that his wife, against whom he was competing during the episode, planned to bring out Paula Abdul, he wanted to up the ante.
“I was like, ‘Hmm, who can I bring out?’ I know Beyonce’s not gonna come, so I wanted to bring, like, a cardboard cutout of Beyonce out just to be funny,” he explained. “Ultimately I ended up having to meet Beyonce doing Beyonce, and that was definitely the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.”
Queen Bey joined Tatum onstage while he lip-synced her 2011 hit single “Run the World (Girls)” while in full costume, complete with a blond wig, crop top and thigh-high boots.
Tatum compared meeting Beyonce to Kevin Spacey‘s near-mythical character from the 1995 film The Usual Suspects — Keyser Söze. “I don’t know if you guys know who that is, but you know she exists, but you never see her until all of a sudden you’re just like, ‘It happened. Wait, that was her, right?'” said Tatum. “And then you always know she’s somewhere in the world that can reach out and touch you.”
Beyonce didn’t stick around after the performance. “I said ‘Hi’ and she goes, ‘Hey, that was really funny. See ya!'” Tatum said, laughing. “But she did text afterwards and she was like, “Hey, I would love to meet you guys and hang out when you’re not looking like me and so terrifying.”
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