Actors Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill were grand marshals and gave the command to start engines for Sunday’s Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway.
They also were there to promote the June 13 opening of their new movie, “22 Jump Street,” the sequel to “21 Jump Street” which came out a couple years ago.
But their trip to Pocono may have yielded a potential storyline for yet another sequel (23 Jump Street?), where Tatum and Hill get so scared riding along with NASCAR star Danica Patrick in a pace car ride that they want to jump out of the car.
No, Patrick did nothing wrong. It’s just that the supposedly he-man actors wound up being, shall we say, skittish at the very least while Patrick motored around the 2.5-mile tri-oval at around 140 mph.
“My left ear is ringing from Jonah screaming in the backseat,” Tatum said afterward, according to a story by the Associated Press.
Tatum, meanwhile, had a few great impromptu lines himself.
“On a scale of 1 to 10,” Tatum asked Patrick, “how much are you allowed to scare us?”
After Patrick told the Hollywood duo that she’d keep the speed of the Chevrolet SS pace car to 140 mph, rather than the 180 mph-plus she’d do a few hours later in her own race car, Tatum encouraged her to “just break the car. It would be a good story.”
Patrick almost took Tatum up on his suggestion – but then had second thoughts in more than one way.
“If we wore helmets, I’d feel a lot more safe,” Patrick said with a laugh. “If I crash with you guys in it and something happens to us, then I’ll go down as the worst driver ever.”
Her job of chauffering around the two stars finally over a few laps later, Patrick and her newly-made friends bantered a bit before she prepared to climb into her car while Tatum and Hill prepared for their grand marshal duties.
But given Hill’s reaction while Patrick motored around Pocono, she couldn’t help but ask if he watches NASCAR on a regular basis.
To that, Hill said, “I don’t watch it, but I’m going to start now.”
I’m telling you, there’s a script to be had here. Maybe two actors need to get into a car chase trying to catch the bad guys, but instead of doing the driving themselves, they have Danica behind the wheel.
Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket.
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