Strays: The one thing Will Ferrell’s dog wouldn’t do

Strays features Will Ferrell as the voice of a dog on a mission to bite off his owner’s penis. But during the making of the movie, there’s one thing the canine he plays wouldn’t do.

Strays is a high-concept comedy that stars Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, and Randall Park voicing a pack of adorable dogs. Here’s the official synopsis for the movie:

“When Reggie, a naïve, relentlessly optimistic Border Terrier, is abandoned on the mean city streets by his lowlife owner, Doug, Reggie is certain that his beloved owner would never leave him on purpose. But once Reggie falls in with a fast-talking, foul-mouthed Boston Terrier named Bug – a stray who loves his freedom and believes that owners are for suckers – Reggie finally realizes he was in a toxic relationship and begins to see Doug for the heartless sleazeball that he is.

“Determined to seek revenge, Reggie, Bug, and Bug’s pals – Maggie, a smart Australian Shepherd who has been sidelined by her owner’s new puppy, and Hunter, an anxious Great Dane who’s stressed out by his work as an emotional support animal – together hatch a plan and embark on an epic adventure to help Reggie find his way home… and make Doug pay by biting off the appendage he loves the most.”

The one thing Will Ferrell’s dog wouldn’t do in Strays

We asked director Josh Greenbaum what he couldn’t get the dogs to do in Strays, and the answer is surprising.

“I would’ve guessed it would’ve been something absurd,” says Greenbaum. “Because it’s an adult movie, we needed them to hump at times. I remember asking the trainers if that’s something they could train, and of course they didn’t bat an eye. They said: ‘Absolutely.’ And I thought: ‘This is crazy.’

“So here’s what I would say, weirdly, is the hardest thing to do. I would never have guessed it. As a filmmaker you use something called a ‘walk-and-talk’ all the time. You have two characters in a scene, they walk side-by-side, it keeps things moving, it’s interesting, and you talk to each other. It’s very easy. With dogs, they don’t walk side-by-side. They don’t keep pace with each other. One of the dogs happened to have three-feet-tall legs because he’s a Great Dane, the other had six-inch legs because he’s a little Boston Terrier.

“So you realise that getting them to walk side-by-side was very, very hard. Then having them look at each other while they’re walking? Again, they don’t do that. You have to hide a trainer off to the side who clicks and makes a noise and then the dog stops because it wants to know what that noise was. So I never would have thought that that – the easy walk-and-talk – is really hard. And unfortunately I had a lot of that in the film!”

The dogs in Strays are 95% real

We also asked how much of the film features real dogs, and how much is CGI…

“I would say about 95% of what you are looking at is real dogs,” says Greenbaum. “I made my job and my life way harder by going about it this way. But I knew I wanted the performances of the dogs to feel incredibly real. So many of us live with dogs or are around dogs; we know them intimately. In a way that a CG elephant, when I see that in a film, I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, that looks like an elephant.’ But I’m around an elephant one minute a year when I take my kids to the zoo or something – it’s very different with dogs.

“So the bulk of the performances is all real dogs. Obviously I was unsuccessful in getting them to learn how to talk, so we add muzzles and do that part. Then anytime the behavior was either unachievable – or it was even remotely, borderline unsafe – we go to a CG dog. So when there’s a sequence in the film with an eagle who picks up a dog, that of course becomes a full CG dog. But the bulk of it is real dogs.”

Strays is in cinemas from August 17, 2023. While you can check out more TV and Movies coverage here.