Actor Tom Holland is grieving for his family dog, Tessa. The Spider-Man: No Way Home star posted a photo of the blue Staffordshire Bull Terrier passed away recently, though Holland has not yet shared all the details with his followers online. Holland’s father Dominic shared more details on his Patreon blog.
“Missing my lady,” Holland wrote with a heart emoji, alongside a photo of Tessa. He also posted a photo on his Instagram Story along with a link to his father’s blog. In a post titled “T-Day,” Dominic explained that the family had planted a tree in their front yard in honor of Tessa, and had scattered her ashes. He wrote that this was “not so much an obituary – but more an insight into the final lap of the life of a remarkable little dog who had come to dominate my family – indeed, she was the only Holland who everyone loved all of the time.”
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Holland adopted Tessa when she was a puppy, but he was still living with his parents at the time making her more of a family dog. He first posted a photo of her in July of 2014, so she has been his companion for about a decade now. Of course, as Holland was traveling the world and becoming an A-list actor, Tess often had to stay at home with his parents.
Still, Holland made efforts to keep Tessa with him whenever possible, and fans took notice. He held her leash at some events and even on some red carpets, and sometimes she lived with him while he was filming in obscure locations as well. In a 2022 interview on The One Show, he explained how Tessa had come to the set of The Current War and distracted his co-star Benedict Cumberbatch.
“If I’m in London, she’ll come to set. I was shooting this film called The Current War with Benedict Cumberbatch, which was a very serious movie about the invention of the light bulb,” Holland explained. “We were shooting this sequence that was supposed to be in a field, but we shot it in a sound stage, and Benedict was supposed to be giving this massive speech to about 100 extras. Tessa is so well-behaved. I can have her on set, she doesn’t bark, she doesn’t make a noise.”
“I’m sitting there watching Benedict and he’s crying, giving his heart and soul into this performance – and [I realized] my dog obviously some sort of hay intolerance,” Holland went on. “You know how dogs sneeze with just like every fiber in their body? She was just sneezing and sneezing. You could see Benedict trying to stay in character and then, eventually, he was like ‘Can somebody take that dog out, please?’”
Tessa will clearly live on as a fan-favorite celebrity pet and a social media star in her own right. Fans are still sharing their condolences with Holland on social media.
