These days, Channing Tatum is a pro at styling daughter Everly’s hair, but when he was just starting out, there was some ... trial and error.
In fact, he once even tried using a vacuum to create a ponytail for Everly, who turns 8 this month, based on a YouTube hairstyling hack that went viral a few years ago.
“I completely panicked when I found out we were having a girl, and I literally went to YouTube and started figuring out, like, I think the first one I saw was a dad vacuuming up his daughter’s hair with a hair tie on the vacuum and I was like, that’s genius,” the actor, 41, said during a recent interview on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”
However, it sounds like things did not go as planned.
“It doesn’t work like the guy did it,” Tatum said. “I tried it, and it didn’t work as well.”
The vacuum technique may not have been a winner, but Tatum went on to explain that he has mastered the art of braiding Everly’s hair to keep it from tangling overnight.
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“I learned how to braid hair,” he said. “The hardest thing, though, is my daughter has really straight, fine hair. I have to do this every night, or she wakes up with a rat’s nest. It’s like a giant knot back there.”
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He then took a deep dive into his braiding techniques, explaining the challenges of creating an even braid with his daughter’s layered hair.
“The hardest thing, because she has layered hair, is doing the three close to the head equal strands,” he said. “Once I got that, the braiding’s easy. The braiding is really, really simple. But I’ll always get a third of the way through and I’ll realize that one strand is a lot shorter than the other ones, and my OCD kicks in, and I have to restart, and then it’s just terrible.”
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Tatum welcomed Everly in 2013 with his then-wife, Jenna Dewan. He and Dewan announced they were splitting in 2018.
The dad has spoken in the past about connecting with Everly as a single father after he and Dewan divorced.
"I want dads not to be afraid to go into their daughter's world and discover who they are,” he told Parents magazine last month. “When I became a single father, I had a lot of fear about connecting to Everly in every way that a little girl might want."
“I didn't wear nail polish or know how to braid hair,” he added. “But now I do both.”