Ricky Gervais has paid tribute to his “beautiful” on-screen dog who featured in his TV show After Life.
The British comedian and actor said Vislor Antilly, also known as Anti, was a “beautiful soul” and they “hit it off straight away”.
Gervais said the German shepherd helped make After Life his “favourite filming experience of all time” and he was glad he told her “a hundred times a day that she was a very good girl”.
Antilly was Brandy the Dog in all 18 episodes of the Netflix comedy about local newspaper reporter Tony, played by Gervais, who is dealing with his wife’s death.
In the show, which ran for three seasons from 2019 to 2022, Tony is often seen walking Brandy, who stops him from taking his own life.
A statement on the Instagram account of Antilly the Wonder Hound read: “Vislor Antilly, After Life’s Brandy, has sadly passed away. We already miss her terribly. Sleep well xxx.”
She died peacefully at her home in Oxfordshire at the age of 13.
‘Such sad news’
Reacting to the death, Gervais said: “This is such sad news. Anti was a beautiful soul.”
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The canine also featured in Hollywood movies including Tom Cruise’s Edge Of Tomorrow, Michael Fassbender’s Trespass Against Us and George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky.
And she was in TV shows such as The Capture, Doc Martin, Britain’s Got More Talent, and 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
Her final stunt on camera was released in July last year in the Midsomer Murders episode The Debt Of Lies, where she played a retired police dog who detains the murderer before retiring.
After that, Antilly retired from film and television.
‘Animal actor and stunt performer’
Born in April 2011 in Herefordshire, at the home of West Bromwich-based Vislor Dog Training Centre, Antilly was raised by trainers Travis and Ashley Foster, who appeared in Sir Christopher Nolan’s Batman: The Dark Knight. She visited them on set when she was 10 weeks old.
The biography on her Instagram account read: “Vislor Antilly is an animal actor, stunt performer and charity advocate. She played Brandy in After Life by Ricky Gervais and has a very silly tummy.”
