Photo-Illustration: Photo-Illustration: Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
With two weeks left until the Oscars, we finally have an update on everyone’s favorite awards-season subplot: Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale’s bearded dragon. You might recall that Cannavale was unable to attend the Golden Globes — where Byrne won for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy — because he was picking up a bearded dragon for their son at a reptile expo in New Jersey. Byrne originally told this story to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, so obviously Fallon had to follow up when Cannavale appeared on his show on Thursday.
“I never dreamed I could love an animal like this,” Cannavale said. The bearded dragon, who is named Benny, after Benson Boone, is Cannavale’s first-ever pet, and they are getting along swimmingly. “Every day now I just have, like, a little ritual,” he explained. “I take him out at, like, one o’clock. I put him on my chest. We talk … I talk.”
In case you were worried about the bearded dragon’s mental health, fear not. Cannavale has filled Benny’s life with enrichment activities like “obstacle courses,” a hammock, and “a little thing to climb.” However, Benny is mostly uninterested and instead is focused on eating cockroaches and crickets.
If it sounds like Cannavale is doing most of the work in caring for this lizard, that’s probably because he is — Byrne is busy with her Oscar campaign, and Rafael, their reptile-loving son who convinced them to get Benny, is only 8. Luckily, it seems like Cannavale actually loves having so much one-on-one time with the bearded dragon. “I tell him a lot of things, you know; I talk to him,” he said. “I don’t have therapy. I don’t do Pilates or yoga. So it’s my moment, my time.”
Hopefully, there is a third act to this story, where Cannavale and Byrne return to Fallon together and bring Benny along. The people need to see this lizard!
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