Turner & Hooch Stars Share Adorable (and Slobbery) Stories About Working with Dogs

Turner & Hooch came out in 1989 and followed Tom Hanks as a cop who forms a special bond with a Dogue de Bordeaux or Bordeaux Mastiff. More than 30 years later, Disney+ has decided to reboot the film into a series starring Josh Peck as Hanks’ character’s son. While Hanks will not be seen in the new show, Disney+’s Turner & Hooch will feature the return of Reginald VelJohnson as David Sutton as well as a whole new cast of characters. Earlier this week, ComicBook.com attended the show’s premiere and had the chance to chat with some of the cast. Naturally, we asked the actors what it was like working with so many Bordeaux dogs, and they shared some fun set stories.

“The dogs are great, man. I mean, they’re a little diva-ish. Sometimes they won’t come out the trailer when they want them to,” Brandon Jay McLaren (Xavier Watkins) joked. “No, they were great. We had like five of them.” He added, “So we’d just like rotate them in and out when they would get tired. And we had a great dog training staff. They were so imperative to the filmmaking process because the show is the dog. The dog is the star. We’re just there to serve the dog.”

“To work with a dog is great,” Becca Tobin (Brooke) shared. “There was a towel on set. I joined Episode 3 and everybody else had sort of been working with the dog and they had the rundown of the dog and I was thrown into the deep end and I’m looking on set and there’s this towel next to me during this scene and the dog’s there. And I’m like, ‘What is that?’ And I go to pick it up and the trainer’s, like, ‘That’s the drool towel!’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so disgusting.’”

“It’s so fun having dogs on set. It kind of alleviates any stress or tension,” Cristina Rosato (Olivia) shared. “They’re just so fun and kind of silly. Even though they’re really well-trained dogs, they’re still animals, so they’re not really a part of the whole set environment in the sense of the normal. So it was really nice.”

“Oh, it was awesome,” Jeremy Maguire (Matthew) said about working with the dogs. “But the thing was, it was so unpredictable. But even then, it always ended up so fun. And I wish I could do way, way, way more.”

Turner & Hooch is set to premiere on Disney+ on Wednesday, July 21.