Anti the Wonder Dog

Now that “After Life,” the popular Netflix series created by and starring Ricky Gervais, has released its third and final season, let us honor the real star of the show, Antilly the German Shepherd.

Antilly – “Anti” per her IMDb profile – plays Brandy the Dog. Gervais is Tony, an epically depressed man whose wife has succumbed to cancer. When Tony is about to end his own life, Brandy becomes his reason to live. (I.e., she needs to be fed.) Brandy is an ongoing comfort to Tony as he navigates his grief.

Anti’s first film role was in the 2014 sci-fi flick “Edge of Tomorrow,” in which she plays a soldier dog (uncredited) while Tom Cruise saves the world. And she comes from a show business family: her parents appeared in “The Dark Knight Rises” two years earlier (young Anti visited the set when she was just ten weeks old).

Ashley Foster and Beth Heale of Bicester, Oxfordshire are Antilly’s human parents. Gervais himself chose Anti for the Brandy role in 2018, when he told the owners he was looking for “a Scooby Doo-type dog,” Heale told the BBC. “He told us, if I had to describe to aliens what a dog is, I would show them a picture of Antilly.”

Gervais was smitten. “Spent a lovely day casting for my leading lady in #AfterLife. This beautiful girl got the part,” the showrunner tweeted and attached a happy selfie of the two actors.

Netflix has compiled some tear-jerking moments with Brandy here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A2s2sIpA4s.

Anti’s next role is as Kennel Dog in the Irish film “Róise & Frank,” to be released this year.

Photo credit: Netflix