LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Channing Tatum recently opened up about when he first met his ex-wife Jenna Dewan. The ‘Step Up’ star also shared during his appearance on ‘TODAY with Hoda and Jenna’ that he never planned to be a single dad, describing the challenges he faced while raising his daughter Everly, 10.

While promoting his latest children’s book ‘The One and Only Sparkella and the Big Lie’, Tatum opened up about the hardships he went through. "I didn’t plan to be a single dad, that was not in the cards [or] in my planning at the least," he said. "And I was pretty nervous. I was like, ‘She’s a girl.’ I was like looking up YouTube on how to braid her hair. I didn’t want to be the dad who was bringing her to school looking like she had just slept on the street.”

Reflecting on how the experience helped in creating the book, the ‘Magic Mike’ star said, “So yeah, this series of books kind of came from that. It was me really figuring out how to talk to a little girl." Tatum shares his daughter with his ex-wife Jenna Dewan, 42, whom he met during the filming of ‘Step Up’. While the movie brought tremendous recognition for the duo, it also kickstarted their romance. However, while their on-screen chemistry was as hot as it could be, their first on-screen kiss might have left a bad aftertaste.

'I remember her breath being bad'

In a 2012 interview, Tatum shared with RSS how they met. He shared, “I was reading with all the girls for Step Up and she walked into another girl’s audition.” Tatum also remembered the initial days for another reason. He continued in the same interview, “I remember her breath being bad when we actually had a kissing scene. She loves it when I bring that up. It actually got better, I married her.”

In a 2011 interview, Tatum also said that Dewan was the “messier” of the two. He said, as per Evening Standard, "Even though my clothes are literally everywhere, she's actually the messier one. But Jenna does pick up the clothes and does the laundry. I'm more of the kitchen guy, and I vacuum and keep the desk organized. So, we split it down the middle."

‘It was probably exactly what I needed’

The romance, however, couldn't stand the test of time. Tatum and Dewan separated in 2018 and were declared divorced in 2019. The ‘GI Joe’ star once revealed to Vanity Fair, “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.”

He further added that the differences became irreconcilable after the birth of their daughter Everly. “But when you’re actually parents, you really understand differences between the two of you,” he said. “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.”

However, the dancing star can also see the silver lining of his divorce as he believes that decision probably helped him the most during that time of his life. “It was probably exactly what I needed,” he noted. “I don’t think I would’ve ever done the work, I think, on myself in the way that I had to do the work on myself to really try to figure out what next.”