Channing Tatum directs and stars in his first buddy comedy with a canine co-lead.
Co-director Reid Carolin goes off-leash to chat about the process.
Despite the emotional material, “It was so fun coming to set every day,” says Carolin.
Reid Carolin and one of the Belgian Malinois dogs who play Lulu in ‘Dog’.Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/MGM
“When the dogs showed up, it would put a smile on everybody’s face.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with the logistics.
How did you find these dogs and “cast” them for the film?
Channing Tatum in ‘Dog’.Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/MGM
And Britta is sort of our hero dog.
Lana was just much more docile.
Where are these movie star dogs now?
It’s really a cool story.
All of them were adopted by their handlers, which was not a given at the very beginning.
They all work with animals all the time, so they have tons of animals around.
And so it ended up being a great situation.
Lana, I believe, lives in Charleston on the water.
Britta lives with her handler in a small town in Montana called Hamilton.
And then Zuza lives in LA.
Who messed up the most takes, the dogs or the actors?
Oh, God, what a good question.
Should I be honest?
[Laughs] Probably Channing.
The dogs are so well trained.
The thing is, with dogs, you learn to expect the unexpected.
So, I’ll go with the actors.
Do you have a favorite memory of the dogs misbehaving?
So Channing does his thing, and then the trainer signals to Britta.
She goes to Chan, and she just stands over him, barks, and smiles.
We all had a good laugh about it.
I’m sure those outtakes will surface at some point.
And I was like, “Could we try this?”
And everybody’s like, “Well, that’ll never work.
We’ll waste too much time training the dogs.
They’re not trained for it.”
But the trainers were like, “Nah, I think she’ll do that.”
And first take, you know, it’s perfect.
But the acting stuff you have to be more patient with.
We’ve talked about the challenges of working with dogs, but what was the best part about it?
That was just a joy to witness and to see.
I don’t think we even scratched the surface.
That was the fun part learning from them.
Dogis playing in theaters now.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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