4. As for Cumming, he was excited to sign on for his campy role and bring his little dog, too. Recounting the initial pitch to Daily Beast in 2023, “I said, ‘It’s sort of like you want me to be like a Bond villain. And I should actually bring my dog and pet her.’ And they went, ‘That’s a good idea’ And I thought, oh, I want to do this.”

With rescue pup Lala on hand, he leaned hard into his role, quoting playwright William Shakespeare and philosopher Plato on-camera. “So I had this flaring-nostril sort of persona,” he told the outlet. “And you’re kind of making stuff up as you go along. Literally, sometimes, they’re feeding me lines in my ear. So it was a bit like doing stand-up comedy actually, because you’re just winging it.”