For anyone out there thinking, “Good grief, why is Glen Powell bringing his dog around to all the Twisters promotion?” First of all, how dare you. Second, Glen’s rescue pup Brisket is an integral member of the Twisters family. It was while filming on location in Oklahoma last summer that Glen realized, “I just had the desire to be a father.” From there he laid eyes on Brisket up for adoption online, and he just knew: Brisket was the one. He took a week off from filming to pick Brisket up in LA, then whisked the then-two-pound floof back to crate train him on set. Glen fell quickly and he fell hard! And throughout it all, the Twisters cast and crew were cheering him on. Glen waxed on those emotional, early days of pup-parenthood with Entertainment Weekly. And yes of course, Brisket posed with him at the photoshoot.
Powell adopted the dog from the Labelle Foundation while filming the “standalone sequel” to the 1996 classic Twister. (“We’re on set, and I was like, ‘Are you sure you want to get a puppy right now?’ recalls Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung. “But he did, and everybody loved that dog.”)
Everybody including EW’s creative team, who couldn’t help but grab some outtake footage from our photoshoot and turn Brisket into a cover star.
“I was going through a breakup at the time and was in the middle of Enid, Oklahoma, and I had always wanted a dog,” Powell — who’d been dating model Gigi Paris — tells EW. “It was something I thought about a lot, but it was somewhere in this coffee shop in Enid… I don’t even know how to describe it, I just had the desire to be a father.”
The actor says he was following a lot of dog adoption and rescue Instagram accounts (who isn’t?) and came across a picture of Brisket. Knowing the adoption process is difficult, he sought out any friends he knew who followed the rescue (or anyone associated with it) online and asked them to vouch for him.
“I literally messaged saying, ‘Please put in a good word for me,’” Powell shares. “I sent them a heartbreakingly depressing video of me why I needed this dog.”
It worked, and Powell took a weekend off filming to fly to Los Angeles and collect Brisket.
“Everybody knew how excited I was,” he says of the Twisters cast and crew. “I was like, ‘Guys, I’m going to pick him up!’”
Upon arriving on set, Brisket made his presence known. “He was crate training and all that stuff, so he was crying through the night,” says Powell. “I felt like literally a new father, where I wasn’t sleeping while shooting this movie. But Brisket would just kick it with every department head, and he would sit in my chair and just sleep. I had the most adorable picture of Brisket in my Twisters chair at the rodeo. But he really became sort of a set mascot on that movie. It’s just adorable.”
As “beautiful” an experience filming Twisters was, Powell says Brisket has been a “magical gift” because of “the way that he brings me so much joy, and brings everybody around me joy.”
“Sets can be very lonely places,” he continues. “And it’s interesting when you see a dog that’s just filling you up with love, how it brings a cast together even more. There’s something wonderful about animals, about how they can bring our walls down a bit and expedite friendships and things like that. So yeah, Brisket’s been amazing. I consider him the best special feature of Twisters.”
You guys, I swear it’s taken me twice as long to write this because I just. Keep. Staring. At. BRISKET. Walking the red carpet — or more accurately, being carried across it — in his dapper bowtie was one thing, but landing an EW cover shoot? Complete with a wind machine going? It’s official, Brisket is a bone-ified star. He could be getting the next batch of American Riviera Orchard dog biscuits. Not for nothing, but Glen Powell’s press agents must be on cloud nine right now. Everything about this interview is perfect: he’s sappy in his sentiments, but it works because he’s also genuinely in love. And I get it; I was not on the lookout for a dog when I found My Girl, but like Glen, I knew with one look. She was malnourished, not opening her eyes due to an infection, and having episodes of PTSD. Now coming up on 11 years in my care, she’s fat, stares me down until I do her bidding, and is so chill she can’t be bothered by thunder or fireworks. And Brisket… she’s single! True, there’s an age gap, but you two have similar snouts so I think it could work. Call us!!
Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon, IMAGO/Jeffery Mayer / Avalon