Channing Tatum recalls 'scary' 6-year divorce battle with Jenna Dewan

Channing Tatum spoke about his six-year-long "painful" divorce battle with Jenna Dewan, sharing the "tough" part was separation from his daughter amid the proceedings.

In a recent chat with Variety, the 45-year-old actor admitted that the split from Dewan was "terrifying," as the legal battle took a long time over financial details and custody of their 12-year-old daughter Everly.

For the unversed, the former couple tied the knot in 2009 and announced their separation in 2018.

During the interview, the Magic Mike actor was asked if playing the role of a convicted spree-robber who is estranged from his daughter in his new movie Roofman was hard.

In response, Tatum said, "I know for a fact I'm able to understand it. Jenna and I are good now, but it was a painful break to have that fall apart, especially being so young."

The Blink Twice star went on to say, "We tried to keep it together, tried for a year and a half, but we knew it was... [trails off, before stopping himself]. 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," he confessed.

"We fought for it for a really long time, even though we both sort of knew that we had sort of grown apart," he admitted. "I think we told ourselves a story when we were young, and we just kept telling ourselves that story, no matter how blatantly life was telling us that we were so different."

"But when you’re actually parents, you really understand differences between the two of you. Because it is screaming at you all day long. How you parent differently, how you look at the world, how you go through the world," he added.

Moreover, Tatum described that the initial separation "was super scary and terrifying."

"This whole plan that you had literally just turns into sand and goes through your fingers and you’re just like, 'Oh, shit. What now?'" he remarked.