You guys, I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re in the middle of a Channing Tatum explosion. He’s quietly become one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actors and even gets the “and” credit on a couple of recent films by renowned filmmakers — Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight and the Coen Bros.’ Hail, Caesar!. And he’s fantastic in both of those movies, not to mention his star turns in the Magic Mike and Jump Street movies. People just think he’s the bee’s knees, but it wasn’t always that way.

On Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! to promote Hail, Caesar!, Tatum spilled the beans that his worst audition ever was for the third The Fast and the Furious movie, Tokyo Drift. Can you imagine if the Tatums had been cast in that movie? Might he have been the breakout star of the franchise, or would he now be on an NCIS spinoff? The mind reels.

While on the program, Tatum also discussed his big scene in the Joel and Ethan Coen joint, which sees him as a Gene Kelly-like movie star in the early ’50s doing a tap dance number for a big movie. He had to learn tap dancing specifically for that one scene. Tatum got his start as a dancer and broke out as the lead of the film Step Up, but speaking as someone who also had to learn tap dancing (as a chorus member in the 2002 production of George M! in the Standley Lake High School theatre program in Westminster, CO), I can tell you it’s no stroll in the daisies.

Yeah, he makes it look a lot better…jerk. I could have done that, but, you know, I didn’t.

What’s your favorite part of the Tatum’s rise to popularity? What would Tokyo Drift have been like with him at the wheel? Let us know in the comments below!

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Image: Universal Pictures

Kyle Anderson is the Weekend Editor and a film and TV critic for Nerdist.com. Follow him on Twitter!