No-one cared who Jason Gann was until he put on the mangy dog suit.
For 10 years, Jason played the misanthropic, bong-smoking dog, Wilfred, first in a hit comedy series in Australia on SBS, and then in a US version starring opposite Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood, with guest appearances by Jason's comedy hero, Robin Williams.
The US series premiere became the highest-ranking debut sitcom ever for FX Networks. It was praised by the Chicago Tribune as "the strangest new show on TV. And the funniest."
In the show, the rest of the world sees Wilfred as a dog, while his owner sees him as a man dressed in a dog suit – described as part Australian Shepherd, part Russell Crowe on a bender.
The gig required Jason to put on a grey, fluffy dog suit that would define his adult life. By the time filming started for the first US season, he'd been wearing the suit for a decade, and it had become like a kind of psychic prison.
"Every time [I'd] just say to myself: 'This is for the fans. It's for them, it's for them.' And I put it on. It would give me the strength to do it."
The suit opened doors in Hollywood, won Jason the admiration of his idols and gave him the confidence to write a hit show.
But being in costume also sent him into a spiral of using drugs and alcohol, and eventually he faced criminal charges.
As the series progressed, Jason started to worry about whether he was embarrassing himself. He remembers the creeping feeling reaching its height while waiting in his trailer for a photo shoot on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
"I see this suit just hanging there ominously. Like, I don't think I can get in that dog suit again. In all the years of suffering and what that dog suit represented, I got down on my knees and I said, God, please help me find a way to love this."
Back to where it all began
The character of Wilfred can be traced back to Jason's earliest work as a performer, when he was hopping into animal costumes to pay the bills while studying acting and smoking weed in Toowoomba in the early 90s.
His first job at a big department store involved wearing borrowed bear costumes, painting his face like a chipmunk and becoming one of "the biggest children's entertainers in the Darling Downs region."
His next job in a Brisbane theatre also involved entertaining kids in yet another animal suit. Between the second and third shows each day, he ducked into the dressing room to get high and lose himself in the character before getting inside the hot, sweaty and musty suit.
"It was a bit soul destroying," he recalls.
"And at this point, I believe that I am the best actor in the world and that I'm trapped in these animal suits playing these kids. I feel like I'm not in my rightful place."
Looking for his place as an actor, Jason bounced between Brisbane and Melbourne, hunting new opportunities, crashing on a friend's couch, and whiling away the hours on the end of a bong. His fortunes began to change one night when his friend returned from a date that hadn't quite panned out.
"And he said that [her] dog was all over him. Just sort of like, looking at him and putting so much pressure on him that he … couldn't get anywhere with the girl. So without even thinking about it I just start slipping into this character of this De Niro-type dog."
Jason and his co-writer, Adam Zwar, couldn't stop thinking about the idea of a stoner, foul-mouthed dog hectoring his owner's new love interest, so they started writing a script. At one point in its development, Adam asked Jason what the dog should look like.
"I remembered once [backstage] one of my co-stars dressed as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with a cigarette in her hand, and she's giving Santa a mouthful for being drunk on stage. [I was] backstage thinking how it's just so surreal seeing us in these animal costumes, swearing and stinking and sweating and fighting. And I'm like, 'Well it should look like that.'
"I need to be miserable and look ridiculous. So we go to this costume place and I just see this old bedraggled grey thing hanging down off a coat hanger, and it obviously hasn't been hired in years.
"And I just put it on and we both straight away said, 'This is Wilfred'."
Wilfred gets his big break
The first step was to make Wilfred the star of a short film. The short – written by Adam and Jason, and directed by Tony Rogers – became a huge success at the 2002 Tropfest short film festival, winning best comedy and earning Jason the Best Actor award for his role as the foul-mouthed, pot-fuelled pooch.
On the back of this success, they shopped the idea around as a TV show. Wilfred was soon picked up by SBS and it became a cult hit. One review said the show was the rare sitcom to achieve "two series of perfection", and that Wilfred was comparable to UK comedies Fawlty Towers and The Office.
Finally, Jason felt like he was realising his dream of becoming a real actor, and riding his newfound fame for all it was worth.
But even as he increasingly believed that he was "touching something … close to genius", he began to feel trapped by the demands of the dog suit.
Being Wilfred meant invitations to fancy parties and a ready supply of drugs. It was at one of these parties where Jason got himself into serious trouble.
After spending all day drinking in the VIP tent at the Victoria Derby Day races in 2007, Jason was charged with the assault of a shuttle bus driver. On the slim chance of avoiding a conviction, he pleaded guilty and received a 12-month good behaviour bond – avoiding a criminal conviction. But the story of the incident and trial followed him for years to come.
As Jason's personal life was bumping along at rock bottom, professionally things were starting to happen. Offers rolled in from the US, and eventually plans kicked into motion to remake Wilfred for an American audience.
Jason had his sights set on being a writer on the series, but his US manager wanted to aim higher.
"I said, 'I'm not getting in that f***ing dog suit again,'" Gann says.
"He says, 'Hear me out. I know you don't want to play Wilfred again ... [but] it doesn't matter if it's a hit or not, people are going to remember the dog, and you're going to be able to walk into any room in Hollywood and design your career.'
"I can't argue against that. I said 'If you sell it, I'll do it.'"
Chasing his own tail in the USA
Jason says landing in LA for the first season of the US series was surreal. His manager was waiting for him at the airport, and what followed was the full Hollywood experience. It was the culmination of a dream he'd had since he was a kid.
Jason worked as a writer on the show and played Wilfred opposite Elijah Wood. US audiences loved the show. Just like in Australia, it was a hit and was renewed for another season. Yet moving to a new country with a new TV deal did not stop his personal problems.
But when he became a father, Jason was motivated to get sober.
After some stints in rehab, he says he stopped drinking and smoking weed altogether.
"For the first three years of writing Wilfred in America, I'm not smoking any weed at all, and I didn't have a drink. I'm a different man, I'm totally reinventing myself," he says.
"There was pressure to be high because when I wrote the Australian Wilfred, I was high every time I'd get to the keyboard. But in this case, the other writers were but I never was."
He was, however, still suffering long days in the dog suit.
"Sometimes I'd finish a scene and when I take it off, I'd just throw that hood as far as I could.
"But around about season three or four, it started to feel more like a superhero suit than a burden. And it was almost like Wilfred was this other thing that was much bigger than me.
"So by the end of the show, I had found a way to love that guy."
Life after Hollywood
After the US series ended, Jason tried his hand at a few other gigs in Hollywood, mainly as a screenwriter. He was unsuccessfully pitching shows and soon his calendar started to empty.
"Things started going a bit downhill for me in Hollywood. I wasn't making as much money from these scripts and I wasn't happy. My former manager was right – Wilfred did open up every door in Hollywood, but I wasn't smart with business and my asking price was getting less and less as time was ticking by."
Eventually he gave up chasing the Hollywood dream.
When the show finished, Jason was allowed to take home one of the dog suits he'd spent so long trying to escape.
One day, sitting around at home, he took the mangy suit off its hanger, and his mind drifted to all his social media followers. Recreational cannabis had been legalised in California, and there was money to be made in marijuana.
"So I jump in the suit and take a photo of me pulling a bong. And I did this joke about 'Wilfred's weed delivery service is coming to your door.'"
It was meant to be a joke, but his fans didn't see it that way. They went wild for the idea of Wilfred the dog coming to their house to deliver weed and, for an extra fee, smoking a bong on the sofa.
Since then, Jason's cannabis delivery business has taken off. He's had to learn about design, manufacturing, and marketing, all on the fly. He even dons the dog costume from time to time. Wilfred's raggedy costume has remained a suit of armour.
"That dog has given me so much. Even though I wanted to throw him away so many times, he just keeps coming back.
"Every time I put it on and every time I draw on that black nose, it's an honour and it's a little ceremony.
"I just am very grateful that at this age I'm still dragging on the dog suit every now and then. I don't put it on as much, but every time I do, it's special."
