Adam Rodriguez may be best known for his long-running role on CBS’s CSI: Miami and, now, his new starring work on the network’s popular procedural Criminal Minds. Yet the 41-year-old actor also made a big-screen splash courtesy of Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 male-dancer saga Magic Mike and its even more boisterous 2015 sequel Magic Mike XXL. As he recently told Yahoo, he nabbed those cinematic stripper gigs thanks to the films’ leading man.

In the above video, Rodriguez says that his Magic Mike part came about thanks to a 2004 guest appearance on CSI: Miami by a young Channing Tatum (in one of his first high-profile acting jobs). The two struck up a friendship during the shoot. When Tatum subsequently became a big-time movie star, he came calling for Rodriguez to join him in Soderbergh’s exotic-dancing epic — and Rodriguez was more than willing to team up for the project, which he says “was tough” because of the physical and dance-related training required.