Ilusion is wry about this “light-bulb moment,” which she says initially made her angry. But then she realized that for her husband, all knowledge walks on four legs. His mantra of “exercise, discipline and affection” — the essential trio that he says keeps dogs (and apparently wives and anyone else) happy and healthy — was born that day. Now, Mr. and Mrs. Millan are a team.
“We’re what I call Mr. Talent and Mrs. Brains,” says Ilusion. “You can’t have one without the other.”
Cesar agrees: “My wife rehabilitated me.”
BACK in 1991, Mr. Millan’s English was poor, which made him reluctant to charge much for his door-to-door training services. “My goods were good, but my delivery wasn’t,” he says, recalling that his initial rate per session was $10. “We couldn’t even afford Pampers.” But his reputation was spreading.
One of his first clients was Jada Pinkett, then 20 and starring in a television sitcom. As he helped Ms. Pinkett, just 5 feet tall, become pack leader to four huge Rottweilers, they became friends. When Mr. Millan told her he wanted to be on TV, she leveled with him: he wasn’t ready. Then, she hired him a tutor in English. He studied for a year.
For all Mr. Millan learned during that period, the actress says he taught her even more.
“When Cesar came into my life, I was a young starlet,” she says. “I had all this energy and all this power at my fingertips, but I didn’t know necessarily what to do with it.” She credits him with helping her have good relationships with both canines and humans. (She married Will Smith in 1997.)
“We want to have our own self-fulfillment, and we’re not paying attention to what the dog needs,” says the actress, now Jada Pinkett Smith. “Then we’re throwing the dog into complete imbalance and wondering, What is the problem? That was a crazy discovery: Oh, my goodness, I wonder if I’m doing that in other relationships.”
The Smiths started recommending Mr. Millan to friends. The director Michael Bay needed help controlling his 230-pound mastiff, Mason. Later, he sought out Mr. Millan for help with another mastiff, Bonecrusher (a nod to the Transformers villain of the same name). Bones, as he is called, liked to attack small dogs. Mr. Millan brought a tiny dog to Mr. Bay’s house, as well as his sidekick, Daddy, a gentle pit bull that “Dog Whisperer” fans will recognize from his frequent appearances on the show. For $60 a day, Mr. Millan and Daddy shaped Bones right up.
“It was the oddest experience in the world,” says Mr. Bay. “He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t say, ‘Here, doggie.’ He doesn’t pet the dog. It’s like this animalistic thing between him and the dogs. They immediately respected him.”
In 2002, after a newspaper article about Mr. Millan drew dozens of producers to his door, he teamed up with two of them, Sheila Emery and Kay Sumner, whom he picked because the dogs in his pack liked them best. That pair teamed with MPH, which had made its name with other successful reality-based cable shows.
The National Geographic Channel, which had started in the United States only in 2001, was interested but didn’t want to bankroll the entire production. It ordered 26 half-hours with the caveat that MPH provide deficit financing to get the show on the air — what Mr. Milio said eventually amounted to “a low seven-figure investment.” The upside was that MPH and Emery/Sumner retained copyrights to the show.
The channel, a joint venture of the National Geographic Society and Fox Cable Networks, controls television distribution in the United States and Canada. MPH and Emery/Sumner control worldwide home video and foreign sales and share that revenue with the channel. Mr. Millan takes a big slice of that same pie.
“His profit definition is the same as our profit definition,” Mr. Milio says. “We’re not doing the studio thing where we’re taking off 25 percent overhead and then interest on the money and all that stuff. He’s got a really great deal.”
Mr. Millan calls the deal, which he agreed to on instinct, a blessing. “The goal that God and I have together is the whole world transformed through a dog. God was my lawyer,” he says. “And so he’s going to bring you great people, and those great people are going to give you your fair share without you asking.”
