‘Blue Valentine’ Director Says Channing Tatum Wasn’t a ‘Jerk’ for Rejecting Role (Exclusive)

Channing Tatum may have shot down Derek Cianfrance — but the filmmaker doesn’t hold it against him.

Back when Cianfrance, 51, was beginning to work on what would become his 2010 drama Blue Valentine, which he directed and co-wrote, he had one man in mind for the lead male role: Tatum. But the then-burgeoning actor, 45, turned down the part. 

The role ultimately went to Ryan Gosling — who Cianfrance would later collaborate with again on Place Beyond the Pines — and the director told PEOPLE last month that he “didn’t feel betrayed” by Tatum’s decision. In fact, he explained, he remembers Channing’s kindness in that moment more than anything.

“He was so generous and kind to me, and he really took care of me,” Cianfrance said of Tatum at a special screening of their film Roofman in New York City on Sept. 8.

“I didn’t think he was a jerk,” the director continued. “He was like, ‘I love your script, bro, but I just don’t know who this guy is.’ I loved him. I didn’t feel betrayed or pushed aside by him. I loved him.”

The director — who had envisioned Tatum in Blue Valentine after seeing him in 2006 drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints — went on to tease the actor-turned-pal for his prolific run after he turned him down.

“I mean, after that moment, I started seeing him in so many movies,” the director said, joking that “apparently, he was saying ‘yes’ to a bunch of other filmmakers, but that’s okay. I didn’t hold it against him.”

Blue Valentine follows the love story of couple Dean and Cindy, portrayed by Gosling and Michelle Williams, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance. And while Tatum turned down the role of Dean, he later accepted a different role in a Cianfrance movie: Roofman.

Roofman stars the actor as real-life convict Jeffrey Manchester — who became notorious for robbing 45 McDonald’s restaurants — during his six-month stint evading capture by hiding in a Toys “R” Us store. Alongside the talents of costars Kirsten Dunst, Peter Dinklage, Juno Temple and LaKeith Stanfield, the film showcases all of the sides of Tatum that drew Cianfrance to him in the first place, the director told PEOPLE.

“I loved what he could do. Like in the movies, when he played a romantic lead, he was incredibly romantic. In action movies, he was just like the best action star. And then in comedies, he was hilarious. And then in dramas, he was great,” the Blue Valentine director said of Tatum, adding that he “only loved him more and more after I saw him over the years.”

“And I think what I wanted to do in Roofman, is I could see all those sides of him — very complicated, contradictory sides — and I kind of wanted to make a soup, or a stew, of all those sides of Channing Tatum in one movie,” he added.

That, and Cianfrance could see so much of the She’s the Man actor in Jeffrey, “because Jeff has a real inner child that’s alive inside of him and so does Channing,” he told PEOPLE. “Channing’s a bit of a Peter Pan character.”

Cianfrance met with Tatum for hours (learning about “his regrets, his loves, his losses” and more, per the director) before taking nine months to re-write his initial Roofman script with the actor in mind. He then presented Tatum with the script — and this time, he was in. “I was so thankful and relieved,” Cianfrance recalled.

With Roofman, the filmmaker told PEOPLE, “I wanted to make a movie they used to make in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s — just a pure, original, crazy story. And eventually, one day, I was shooting in this toy store in North Carolina and it was alive, and Channing Tatum was in his underwear and a pair of Heelys.

“And I was like, ‘Okay, dreams do come true.’ ”

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Roofman arrives in theaters Oct. 10.