Mark Ruffalo Says He “Slapped The S*** Out Of” Channing Tatum While Filming ‘Foxcatcher’: “He Had Beaten The S*** Out Of Me So Many Times”

Mark Ruffalo came clean about an on-screen slap of his on Thursday’s (Dec. 7) episode of Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans posed a punchy question to the actor, per Huff Post.

“Fact or fiction: is it true that you once accidentally popped Channing Tatum‘s ear during a particularly physical scene in Foxcatcher, where he told you before the take, ‘Just slap the shit out of me?'” he asked.

Ruffalo replied, “Oh, there was a lot of that,” adding that the Magic Mike star “did ask [him] to slap the shit out of him.”

“And it was easy to do because he had beaten the shit out of me so many times,” he continued.

Recalling that he spent “four months of learning how to wrestle together” with Tatum, he noted that the actor “has 30 pounds on [him].”

“So when it came time to smack the shit out of him, I was like, came from Alabama,” he quipped.

According to Variety, Tatum originally shared the story of his injured eardrum during an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, who said that “all of a sudden [his ear was] just making a screeching noise.”

“I can’t hear anything,” Tatum recalled at the time. “Eardrums heal, so I’m fine.”

The film directed by Bennett Miller is based on the true story of John du Pont (played by Steve Carell), the heir to his du Pont family fortune who trained athletes under his Team Foxcatcher and who was ultimately found guilty of murdering wrestler Dave Schultz (portrayed by Ruffalo) in 1997, per The New York Times.

Watch Ruffalo’s full Hot Ones interview above.