Unlike ABC’s unsuccessful Jenna Elfman project Imaginary Mary, Tolman isn’t deep in two-way conversations with her canine co-star. Instead, Martin breaks the fourth wall, directing his monologues at viewers. No one was more surprised than Tolman that she wound up on a talking-dog show. “I got an e-mail [from my team] saying, ‘Here are the things we are looking at and think you should read. This one has a talking dog,” Tolman told me. “I was like, what …?”
Fresh off the first season of the critically acclaimed FX series Fargo, Tolman wasn’t overly enthusiastic about sharing the screen with a talking dog and e-mailed her team with real concerns. “I did say, ‘I’m slightly concerned because one of these shows says the star is a talking dog?’” she recalled. “But sure, send the script over. I read it and was super confused because the jokes were funny, it was clearly smart, but I was so confused.”
A viewing of the digital shorts the series is based upon provided clarification. “After watching those I got it,” she said. “Then I met with the guys doing the show and I was all in. It’s funny how quickly the fact that the dog talks becomes the least important thing about the show.”
According to Tolman, having the series on ABC, a network celebrated for traditional sitcoms, also offered her pause. “I was really surprised when they said ABC had won a bidding war for it,” she said. “I was like, is that where we feel we should go? Is this the right place for us?
“But they wanted an edgy comedy and had been looking for this type of show,” she continued. “They do what they do so well, but they wanted to mix it up a bit, so the talk was, ‘Let’s try this other thing.’ They didn’t bid on us hoping to take the show and make it into a sitcom; they bid on it hoping to take the show and let it be what was. I came from this golden experience with Fargo, where we never did a pilot and went straight to order. It was just a very different experience, so it was a little scary for me taking on a very different network show and saying yes."