The cast of the ITV drama have plenty of animal co-stars – but here they talk about their real-life furry companions

Keeley Hawes and Nana

Nana is named after the dog in Peter Pan, which was a film we used to watch a lot when the kids were smaller [Hawes has three children with her husband Matthew Macfadyen]. And in fact, she has turned out to be a bit of a nana! She’s coming up to seven and she just loves to snooze. When I was looking for pictures of her, I could only find one with her eyes open.

We’re allergic to dogs, so she’s a hypoallergenic breed called a coton de tulear. She doesn’t moult, so she’s pretty easy to care for. She loves to go out, but she’s very little; she bounces along like a bunny rabbit and wears herself out quite quickly before coming back for a nap.

She has beds everywhere: one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom, one in my son’s room. Her favourite place is in front of the fire in the living room. She has a pretty nice life!

Nana is our first dog but we’ve had hamsters, fish, rabbits and chickens. The problem is that they always end up being my responsibility. When the hamster died, the kids said, “I’m so sorry about your hamster, Mummy.” I could live without hamsters, but we all love Nana very much. And while she may be the family dog, she knows who feeds and walks her, so if she had to save one of us in a fire it would probably be me.

I always had a dog or two growing up so getting one was something I always wanted to do. We mostly had standard poodles, because of the allergies – this was before cockapoos and the other trendy ’poos came along.

Nana’s very patient with the kids. My daughter teaches her tricks: sit, paw, lie down and roll over. Although I think her best trick is “selective deafness”. She’ll just sit with her back to you and ignore you if you’re asking her to do something she doesn’t want to do. Funnily enough, when it’s something fun, her hearing comes back!

As an animal person, The Durrells is a wonderful job. We get up close with them in a way only a zookeeper would. And you never know what they’re going to throw at you. This series there was a scene where I had a sheep on a lead, a goat, a pelican and a donkey. I thought, “Please, this is not a normal job, I’m not sure I signed up for this.” But it’s good fun.

I was also tasked with holding Frank the sloth. It wasn’t supposed to be me, but he was too heavy for anyone else because for a scene that takes a minute and a half on screen, it can take up to four hours to wrangle the animals and get everything right. Turns out sloths are a bit unwieldy. But she – I think Frank was a “she” in real life – was lovely and seemed to live on a diet of mozzarella and strawberry yogurt!

And we had flamingos this year, which are much more on the wild side. Milo [Parker], who plays Gerry, and I had a scene where we got to feed them, which was wonderful.

It’s a real pleasure watching my on-screen family grow up in real life. You don’t notice it so much with your own kids because you see them every day, but in the gap between filming, Milo shot up by about two feet! And he is so good with the animals. He has to spend more time with them than the rest of us and he’s very patient and calm and still with them.

Honestly, though, on The Durrells set the animals get treated better than the actors. The welfare of the animals is higher than any human. A lot of the animals we use are rescued, and often the crew end up taking them home. There are a lot of happy endings. Although I don’t think I’ll take anything home – I’ve got enough on my plate with Nana and the kids!