Sally Field bonds with an octopus in Netflix’s “Remarkably Bright Creature” (streaming now). She’s equally close with her furry friend at home.
Sally Field reveals dog made her want ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’
Sally Field reveals how her bond with her dog drew her to “Remarkably Bright Creatures” and its moving story of human and animal connection.
Sally Field costars with an octopus in Netflix’s “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” partly because of her furry beast at home.
Field read Shelby Van Pelt’s 2022 novel before it was published, and got through about “two or three chapters before I realized I wanted to do this,” the 79-year-old, two-time Oscar winner says about her newest movie (streaming now on Netflix). The story attracted her first, a heartwarming narrative about an aquarium cleaner (Field) who looks after a giant Pacific octopus (voiced by Alfred Molina) and the young drifter (Lewis Pullman) who deepens both their lives while doing his own soul-searching.
But Field also loved her character Tova’s “really important but sort of unrecognized” relationship with the aforementioned mollusk, Marcellus. She understood that dynamic because she had recently formed one with her little Cavapoo dog, Dash.
“I didn’t know there was going to be a pandemic. No one told me it was coming!” Field recalls. “And then I was in shutdown with a little puppy, and he became my everything.
“My grandkids would drive by and wave, because no one could come in. Everybody remembers those horrible months and months and months when we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Dash “changed me because I never had a real, profound connection with a creature. So this story really linked to that,” says Fields, who’s a “huge” fan of crime fiction. Which is why she named the pooch after writer Dashiell Hammett, famous for creating the literary detective Sam Spade and crafting hard-boiled novels like “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Thin Man.”
Field had seen the 1977 political drama “Julia” with Jane Fonda as writer Lillian Hellman. “She was then living with Dashiell Hammett, and I could hear her calling him: ‘Dash! Dash!’ ” she says. “It just stuck in my head.”
She’s “a big reader” in general – the best thing she’s enjoyed lately is the Percival Everett’s “magnificent” novel “James” – and when it comes to crime books, “I think I’ve covered them all now just about,” Field says. “As I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten more and more serious. And if I’m not reading it, I’m also listening to them” via Audible and other apps.
“The actors that read them are so good,” Field adds. “I so appreciate them immensely, because if I’m doing stuff in the house, if I’m doing the dishes or I’m walking the dog or out doing some menial task, I’m always in some fabulous place and talking to them: ‘What, are you crazy?!’ It’s such wonderful entertainment.”