Channing Tatum has a fellow actor to thank for setting him up with Zoë Kravitz.
The celebrity couple confirmed their relationship after riding through the streets of New York City together in 2021, and while they’ve since become engaged, Tatum says none of it would’ve happened if it weren’t for Elvis Presley’s granddaughter.
“I remember Riley Keough texted me,” Tatum told E! News correspondent Will Marfuggi on Wednesday. “She was like, ‘Hey, I have a friend that wants to send you something. Do you know Zoë Kravitz? I’m going to give you her number.’”
“The very first time we met, it was after I read this thing that she sent me called ‘Pussy Island,’” he later explained. “I was like, ‘I guess I’m definitely reading this.’”
Tatum has since become a treasured member of his fiancée’s family and was recently praised by her rock star father, Lenny Kravitz, as a “very soulful human being.”
While Zoë will tie the knot for the first time, Tatum was previously married to dancer and actor Jenna Dewan. The two announced their separation on social media in 2018 and are still finalizing aspects of their divorce.
While Tatum and Kravitz were first linked in 2021, they had circled each other for years.
“We both were going out for a movie that I ended up doing called ‘A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,’” Tatum said Wednesday. “Then she was in Jodie Foster’s [2007 movie ‘The Brave One’]. That’s the first time I ever saw her, and that was right around the same time.”
Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images
Tatum added that his fiancée is “one of the cooler people” he’s ever watched on screen and admitted to “tracking” her career before they started dating.
The “Pussy Island” script Kravitz sent Tatum eventually became her film “Blink Twice,” a thriller she cowrote and directed that stars her now-husband-to-be.
The film follows a tech billionaire (Tatum) who invites a young cocktail waitress (Naomi Ackie) on a luxurious vacation to his private island when a sinister truth is revealed.
“She really doesn’t do anything but watch movies,” he told Esquire in a feature on Kravitz published Wednesday. “She’s like, ‘I don’t do activities. I don’t go hiking. I just love movies.’”