It’s hard to be a movie star and a dad at the same time — just ask Channing Tatum.

On the latest episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Daniel D’Addario, Variety chief correspondent, details his reporting for Variety’s Sept. 2 cover story featuring Tatum and director Derek Cianfrance discussing how they brought a stranger-than-fiction true crime story to life in Paramount Pictures’ “Roofman.”

Tatum and Cianfrance came together as collaborators at a time when both of them were regrouping in their careers. Tatum is extremely open in discussing the challenges of juggling movie shoots around the world with his most important job of being a parent to his 12-year-old daughter.

Tatum, D’Addario notes, is at a key transition point in his career as he reaches his mid-40s. “Roofman,” which premieres Saturday at the Toronto Film Festival, tells the story of a blue-collar North Carolina man, Jeffrey Manchester, who wound up living secretly in a Toys R Us store and robbing McDonald’s fast food restaurants in order to provide for his daughter. Manchester was sentenced to 34 years in prison after being convicted of several robberies in 2000.

“I think of [Tatum] as the guy from ‘Magic Mike’ or ’21 Jump Street’ — a fun loving, a goofball. He’s lived a lot of life since then,” D’Addario says. “Those movies were almost 15 years ago, and at 45, he is extremely reflective about the kind of career he wants to have and the kind of work he want

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from “Your People Are in Danger,” the Season 1 finale of “Countdown,” now streaming on Prime Video.

Over the course of the last three decades, Jensen Ackles has quietly built up one of the most notable TV careers of his generation. After breaking out as Eric Brady on the long-running NBC soap opera “Days of Our Lives” — which earned him three consecutive Daytime Emmy nominations — in the late ’90s, Ackles carved out a niche for playing tortured heartthrobs in all kinds of broadcast dramas: high-concept sci-fi (“Dark Angel”), teen (“Dawson’s Creek”), and superhero (“Smallville”). In 2005, he debuted as Dean Winchester, one-half of a dynamic duo of monster-hunting brothers, on The CW’s “Supernatural.”

Since saying goodbye to the long-running series which transformed him and his onscreen brother Jared Padalecki into icons of fantasy storytelling, Ackles has spearheaded a short-lived spinoff about the Winchester parents (he was the narrator and an executive producer of “The Winchesters”), played a charming county sheriff (“Big Sky”), voiced Batman in a series of DC animated projects and reunited with “Supernatural” creator Eric Kripke in “The Boys” as the hyper-masculine anti-hero Soldier Boy.

Ackles’ latest show, “Countdown,” by comparison, feels just a little more grounded in reality. Created by Derek Haas, who oversaw the inception of NBC’s venerable “One Chicago” franchise, the new crime drama stars Ackles as Mark Meachum, an LAPD detective who is recruited to a covert task force to investigate the deat

It’s been just over a week since Devon Walker left “Saturday Night Live,” and he’s ready to talk about his three-year tenure on the show.

The comic and actor, best known for playing Eric Adams on the sketch comedy show, shared mixed feelings about “SNL” while announcing his departure, writing, “Sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell … We made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction. We made a fucked up lil family.”

Strolling laps around Madison Square Park on Tuesday afternoon, Walker tells Variety in an interview, “I’m so grateful to have been at the show. I’ll be eternally grateful, for the good parts and the bad parts. I’m glad to have seen what that place is.”

He’s just come from recording an episode of his podcast, “My Favorite Lyrics,” an independent venture that Walker says is now courting distribution offers. In the past few days, he’s also had conversations with producers and streamers about his next move.

“I want to tell stories, and I want to tell mine. I want to make stuff that feels honest and true to me,” he says. “Sketch has never been the medium I’ve felt most drawn to, so I’m excited to get into film and TV projects where I can expand what I’ve been trying to do creatively.”

I appreciate it, because if you’re sad about it, that means I made something that meant something to you, which is what’s most important to me. I do this, first, because I enjoy it, and, second, because any artist hopes the things they make resonate with people. I respect people being sad, but I think the level of sad