For Immediate Release:
May 10, 2023
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Los Angeles – With the final season of Sons of Anarchy spinoff Mayans M.C. debuting this month, series star Emilio Rivera has reunited with his Sons co-star Theo Rossi for a new PETA campaign letting people know there’s nothing macho about animal abuse—and dogs should be treated like family and never kept chained.
In an accompanying PETA video spot, Rossi, who also stars in Luke Cage and the upcoming miniseries The Penguin, asks viewers if they’d want to be kept outside with no water in hot or freezing-cold weather. “[Y]ou’re an animal, too. … [W]ould you want to be chained? No,” he says. “You wanna be a tough guy? You wanna be a real man, as they say? Protect your animals.”
Rivera is near tears as he talks about dogs who spend their lives chained. “[S]ometimes you think, Why is my dog barking so much? Because you got him chained up,” he says. “That’s why he’s screaming. He wants your help. It’s heartbreaking, you know? … [B]ecause they give us so much. … Take the chain off.”
Rossi and Rivera’s video features footage of “backyard dogs” filmed by PETA’s field rescue team, which finds suffering, dying, and even dead dogs still on chains every year. Dogs kept penned or chained outdoors often go without adequate food, water, shelter, and veterinary care and are limited to the same few square feet of space day in and day out.
The two stars join a long list of celebrities—including Krysten Ritter, Tom Hardy, John Stamos, Cristin Milioti, Emma Kenney, Danny Trejo, and Edward James Olmos—who have teamed up with PETA entities to promote kindness to animals.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
