VIP costars! While many human actors get top billing on most TV shows and movie sets, it’s often their four-legged counterparts who end up stealing the show.

“Newton is beloved, and I always wanted to include him in this season,” Bridgerton showrunner Chris Van Dusen told Entertainment Weekly in a February 2022 interview about the second season of the Netflix drama. “There’s a little arc for him that audiences can look forward to.”

Season 2 of the period series, which debuted in March 2022 on the streaming platform, follows Julia Quinn’s The Viscount Who Loved Me novel and eldest brother Anthony’s journey to find love. As Jonathan Bailey’s Anthony crosses paths with Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), he also comes toe-to-toe with her faithful canine companion: a corgi named Newton.

“I’m really good with dogs, so he responded to me well,” the Sex Education alum told EW that February of the pooch. “He was a little bit sass and goes off and does his own thing, but I like to think when we were together, he listened to me. Whenever we would do a line run and Newton was there, he would just get in the middle of the circle and roll on his back and be like, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ That was quite cute.”

Ashley continued: “One of the buildings we filmed at, there was pebbles on the driveway. I’d have him on the leash and he’d just be eating the stones and pooping out stones in between takes.”

Channing Tatum, for his part, worked closely with a Belgian Malinois pup in his directorial debut, Dog. The Step Up actor starred as Army Ranger Briggs who took a long road trip with the military canine to attend his late friend’s memorial service. (The dog, Lulu, was the veteran’s former partner.)

“Dogs, especially those kinds of dogs, they’re just so intense,” Tatum said during an appearance on the Kelly Clarkson Show in February 2022. “They’re a lot of energy. … We thought it was a simple movie, [just] me and a dog, but at the end of the day, I probably won’t direct again if I’m going to be in the movie. I’m in every frame of the film.”

The Alabama native joked to Clarkson that a dog “doesn’t care about the story” but instead prefers eating treats, explaining that he could really only have the pup accomplish one task at a time.

Scroll below to learn what it was like for your favorite stars to work with pets on set: