The team seemingly had a great time working together on 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, so much so that Channing Tatum has another project in development with Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Having said this, great times occasionally turned to “bad” shenanigans, and Jonah Hill once shared one memorably bad incident that happened when the two actors were on the Jump Street press tour.
During an episode of Conan the show recently shared with fans, Jonah Hill recalled a time he and Channing Tatum decided to get really drunk on the way to Australia to promote their buddy cop comedy. Obviously, given the lack of alcohol on board airplanes these days, this already feels a bit like a story from a bygone era. It, in fact, happened back in 2012. To begin, Hill joked about how Tatum is a bit of a bad influence on him and how a drunken adventure nearly led him to drown, noting,
When Channing Tatum and I get together, just really bad stuff happens. It’s not OK, you know? He was basically like pouring drinks down my throat from the second I got on the plane. It was all him. I was like, ‘No I want to sleep.’ No, I was wrong too. So, we get there and we get off the plane and are immediately like, ‘Let’s go swimming.’ Blackout drunk. So we go, ‘What’s the coolest beach.’ They’re like, ‘Bondi Beach.’
According to Hill, it’s pretty par for the course for things to turn South when he and Channing Tatum decide to act irresponsibly. However, things might have been very different had the two had any actual knowledge about Bondi Beach before embarking on a drunken swim.
Now, we didn’t know that there’s literally a reality show called Bondi Rescue that there’s such a bad riptide there that dumb tourists get off the plane and drown. And get rescued.We go in the ocean and I start swimming. What feels like a second later I look back and Chans about a mile away from me. He’s this big [motions tiny] and he’s a big guy. I’m the one drifting out far. He’s like by the beach taking pictures with people and I’m literally like head bobbing out like what’s going on, where am I? So I start to swim as hard as I can and I’m not going anywhere. And so, I’m like, ‘This is how I die. I’m a guy who died in the ocean in Australia, drunk, and that’s it.’
Jonah Hill told Conan O’Brien this story from a pretty good-humored point of view. However, honestly, it sounds like he really did almost drown. He was so far out and fighting the tide that he didn’t think he would actually be able to make it back to where his 21 Jump Street co-star was lounging around looking like he was having the best time. Luckily, it seems tourists-- or as Hill put it "dumb tourists"-- do this all the time time and there was a lifeguard on hand to save the day.
Finally, a guy comes out on a jet ski and is like, ‘Hey mate, we got to pull you in or you’re going to die out here.’ So, he kind of pulls me in and I start swimming and I’m exhausted by all the time I swam in place. What’s crazy is there was paparazzi on the beach and rarely in life do you tell a story that’s ridiculous and there’s a picture that’s even more ridiculous.
Unfortunately, paparazzi were on hand and captured the whole debacle with their long lenses. If this were me, I would likely be mortified about the turn of events going public. However, Jonah Hill’s a funny guy and seems to have been able to make light of the situation, even sharing the embarrassing-yet-hilarious image of him sputtering around in the water the celeb photographers got that fateful day, which you can see below.
I suppose alls well that ends in a lifeguard saving your life Baywatch-style. Meanwhile, Hill did not share what else he and Channing Tatum got up to while filming or during the promotion of 22 Jump Street, but if it’s even half as wild as nearly drowning, I do hope it’s a story Jonah Hill tells one day on late night. For now, see what is returning to TV this month with our full TV premiere schedule.
