Naomi Watts Details Working With a Great Dane in ‘The Friend’: ‘He Brings the Heart and Soul Into This Movie’ | Wrap Studio

American author Sigrid Nunez is having quite the showing at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Not only is “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s adaptation of her 2020 novel “What You’re Going Through,” dazzling audiences (and just won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival), but “The Friend,” an adaptation of her National Book Award-winning novel from 2018, is also premiering at TIFF. Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the film stars Naomi Watts as Iris, a woman who is grieving the suicide of her mentor, author Walter (Bill Murray). When Walter dies he leaves Iris to clean up the various aspects of his life – and to take care of Apollo (Bing), a Great Dane with an even greater personality.

For McGehee and Siegel it had been an almost six-year journey to get the movie made, as they told TheWrap editor in chief Sharon Waxman at TheWrap’s 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Mo?t & Chandon and Boss Design., but when they started talking to Watts things really coalesced. “Once we started talking to Naomi about it. We knew that the movie was going to be the thing that we want,” said McGehee. Scott said that the pandemic and the strikes closed things down but there was an upside. “Bing was able to learn a lot more tricks,” Watts said.

“He aged into his role. He was a little bit young when we first met Bing and when we shot the movie, he was five years old, which is exactly right,” said McGehee.

“You can see how focused you have to be to keep the dog still, because sometimes he wants to do what he wants to do, no matter how highly trained he is,” Watts explained. “But it does make for an interesting process of filmmaking. And you know the adage, children and animals are going to make things a lot more difficult when you are making a film, but this four-legged creature brings the heart and soul into this story because he is, as David said so beautifully, he is grieving also.”

Watch the full interview above.

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