#H50 – And Then Came Eddie …

At the beginning of Season 8, three younger cast members joined the Five-0 task force and breathed some fresh air into the show and the set of Hawaii Five-0; Tani Rey, Junior Reigns, and Eddie the K-9. The three of them created some new “fun” on the show.

A few weeks back, the trainer and owner of Eddie,  Sue Chipperton, told the story of how her Eddie got to join the cast of Hawaii Five-0.

Eddie was supposed to be a female German Shepard called Lucy, but for a number of reasons, that did not really work out…..

This is an excerpt from the podcast Sue did with host, Sonja Nordstrom on “K9 Top Tales”.

Sonja herself is a retired FBI Special Agent and a Handler and Trainer of Search & Rescue/Recovery K9s, who served for 25 years.

This is how Eddie, a yellow Labrador Retriever, got cast as a DEA agent and Military veteran.

Transcript: (From 2:57 to 7:37)

Sonja: I would love to start by talking about Eddie and how in heaven’s name, you got them to cast a Labrador Retriever, as a DEA protection train dog on H50?

Sue: Well, yes. That is a story in itself. Just a quick backstory. When I moved to Hawaii in 2014, I had been working on H50 since I moved here, supplying animals to the entertainment industry. And the storyline came up in 2017, where they wanted a dog. And the script read, “German Shepard, named Lucy”.

And the first episode, that the dog was in, was how Steve McGarrett came across the dog and how he ended up with the dog.

And I’m sitting there reading the script, thinking, (a) well, I don’t have a German Shepard and I can get one. It’s not a problem. Like, there’s plenty of people on the Island that I know that have German Shepards. I also have one on the mainland, actually, a Malinois, that had its quarantine paperwork done. It’s bloodwork, so it could fly to Hawaii tomorrow, if need be.

h50eddie
Blessed this morning and always

But you know, I’d rather it be my dog, because that’s my job. And I would, you know, get paid for my dog, rather than paying someone else, to use theirs. So, I had an ulterior motive, to trying to get my dog on the show, versus using someone else’s dog.

So I approached production and the producers, and I told them, you know, here are your options. You have this  Malinois from the mainland. A German Shepard I could find on Oahu, that’s not studio trained, that I would need to put a lot of training into. Or, window number 3, a Yellow Labrador, that is studio trained.

Yet he was green. He had not really done much on set yet. But he definitely had been training since I got him. But with this presentation, I had also got online, and I had googled up every image I could find.

Because the storyline, was the dog, not only was it DEA at that present moment in the storyline, but its backstory was, it was a dog in Afganistan, searching for IED’s. So I had gone and searched for images  of Labradors working overseas in the military, and attached these images with my presentation, saying, “Look, there are plenty of Yellow Labradors, or any kind of Labs, you know, being used for military work, for certain aspects of military work”

And I was adamant about trying to get Eddie, the part. So it boiled down to the logistics of it all of course. The easiest thing for everybody, was to have a dog who was already trained for studio work, and was easily available for the future. I mean it’s great if it’s just a one-off episode, when I am flying him out to Oahu from the mainland, and the storyline is over. But this was going to be a recurring role.

So they ended up going with Eddie, and Steve McGarrett – the actor that plays Steve McGarrett – Alex O’Loughlin, he wanted to meet him. And I remember going down to set, and I met – obviously I worked with him before, because I had worked on the show for 3 years already, doing other animals and stuff.

And he fell in love with Eddie immediately. I took him into his trailer and I just stood in the corner while Alex and Eddie rolled around on the floor, basically.

And the next topic that came up, after they had cast Eddie, was that they were going to continue to call him Lucy. [Laughs]

For some reason they wanted it to be a girl and they wanted the dog’s name to be Lucy. So we had to go through that. And it was Alex that I think, was a big part in saying, “Hey, you know what? I’m just going to throw this out there. It’s a male dog and his name is Eddie. Why don’t we call him Eddie?” 

So there we have how Eddie got cast on Hawaii Five-0

The full podcast is an hour long and they continue to talk about the different scenes that Eddie had to do over the years, and continue with other work that Sue is doing.

You can listen to the full podcast here:

K9 TV Heroes with Sue Chipperton

 

On the DVD extras of Season 8, we stumbled upon a gem – Meaghan, Beulah, and Alex, telling their stories about Eddie, joining the cast.

Transcript:

Beulah: Every time Eddie steps on set, it’s like, …. Yeah, the fans lose it over him.

David Wolkove: Originally, Eddie was supposed to be Lucy. We had written a female dog. We couldn’t find in time, a female dog. So we had cast this dog as Lucy…

Alex: I called Peter, I said, “You should probably come and put eyes on this dog”. He says, “Why’s that?”.

I said, “Well, he’s got a pretty huge dick”

Matt Wheeler: I think the post bill was just too much, to sort of try to make him look like a female dog, of which we did think about for a while.

[Clip from H50 with Lou]

Alex: We all sort of learned, how he works.

[Clip from H50]

Alex:Eddie is like the most high-maintenance, of anyone on the show.

[Clip from a visit to the Vet on H50]

Vet: The bullet missed all of his major organs. And I am amazed that he is able to stay away for the sutures without a cone.

Steve: Oh no, he’s been licking himself, just not there.

Meaghan: We were doing a scene where I had to bend down and give him a treat. And I have these like bags of treats. And as I bend down, you know, I am at Eddie level.

[Clip of H50]

Steve: He likes you

Tani: Not as much as he likes you.

Steve: Oh, we’re growing on each other.

 

Meaghan: It was like I just had to like, you know, place the bag in front of his boner, so that we can just get on with the scene. It was sort of like an ‘Austin Powers’ moment.

Beulah: Yeah, it’s only … when he sees me, he don’t do anything. And then he sees Meaghan, and he’s like a rocketship, man.

Meaghan: He’s young, you know. He’s like a teenage dog.

Alex: I don’t think she should, sort of flatter herself too heavily. Eddie gets aroused when he sits in the wrong position.

Alex: He’s been aroused because of my presence too, Meaghan. Just so you know.

Link to video:

 

We loved McEddie. It was a great choice to add a dog for Steve on the show.