Stephanie Suganami, aka Steph Shep, is known for wearing multiple hats at once: environmental advocate and co-founder of climate education platform, Future, actress (with her latest roles being in psychological thriller Opus and indie horror-comedy Theater is Dead) and, arguably her most important and significant role, she's mom to Sir Binxington Jon Bon Jovi Jackson—her scruffy 25 pound dog with supermodel legs rescued from the Labelle Foundation.
Her love for Binx and concern for what was in dog products already on the market directly inspired her latest role: co-founder of Lil Luv Dog, a brand redefining pet care through a clean, sustainable, and chic lens that the beauty industry already caught onto years ago. Alongside co-founder Cara Santana, the brand raises the standards of pet care to match what we expect and want for ourselves—not in an over indulgent or excessive way, but in an unconditional love way.
So, what does Suganami do when she isn’t spending irreplaceable quality time with her shaggy son, preparing for her latest acting role, or advocating for the future of planet earth through a luxury lens? We luckily have all the answers ahead.
What's your star sign and do you relate?
"I'm a Virgo and I'm a true Virgo. Through and through I identify. It's like my whole personality is being a Virgo, unfortunately. I know I could go really into it: I have a Pisces moon, a Libra rising, but that's really annoying. I love being a Virgo. It's torture, but I wouldn't change it."
What do you think your most Virgo trait is?
"I'm type A and I don't think that necessarily always goes hand in hand, but luckily for me, I just get that real double dose of being a real perfectionist. I think that is probably my most Virgo quality to a fault."
What three words best describe how you're feeling right now?
"Exhausted. I'm tired, but oddly motivated. I don't know. I really like the new year. I get excited about a fresh start. You know how sometimes people can't start things until a Monday? I'm that kind of person. I'm going to start this on a Monday. It's a fresh start. So, I am actually feeling uncharacteristically motivated, tired, and content. I feel like being motivated and content might be contradictory. There's a sweet spot of feeling happy, not in a settling way of content because that's the Virgo in me, but a grounded-ness. I feel a grounded-ness I haven't felt in a long time."
What color is your aura?
"I'd like to think that my aura is yellow. A golden halo is kind of what I think. What color do you think yours is?"
I'd like to think that it's green. Grounded.
"Interesting. I got a little bit of purple."
How would you describe your relationship to beauty and self-care?
"Gosh. I mean, ever evolving. I've gone through a lot of trial and error over the years of figuring out what suits me and what I feel best in. I really enjoy playing with beauty and I would consider it self-care and a hobby; I have a pretty good grip on all of the treatments and things that I do for myself. I feel like I'm at a good place. If we're talking about makeup, I am at the point where I really just care less, and that's a freeing and good place to be."
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If you had to recommend one treatment to someone, which one would it be?
"I love PRP Microneedling. My skin responds so well to it, and every time I do it, it just feels clearer and tighter. I would do it on my whole body if I could. I probably could."
What's the biggest misconception about being a dog mom?
"I mean, we're pretty on the nose. I think it's being indulgent. I think we get a little bit of judgment for the way that we might care for or prioritize our dogs, and I think that that's unfair because I think it is care and love and compassion, why would you want anything less than that? Having a dog kind of cracks that open. For me at least, having to take care of someone outside of myself is really such a responsibility and something that I take seriously. I don't think the way that we care for our dogs is indulgent in any way. I think it's a beautiful form of love."
What led to you wanting to start a fancy pet brand?
"My dog being the love of my life and the reason I wake up every day. When I thought about the way that I take care of him and the things that I feed him, I kind of started thinking about it a little more holistically and compared it to the way that I take care of myself. We're reading labels, we're expecting brands to be transparent and provide clean ingredients and safe products, and I wasn't really finding that the more that I did a deep dive into the pet products and into that category in general. I think that's really what the impetus for all of this was, and why I think Lil Luv Dog is so important—because there really isn't anything that checks all of those boxes of clean ingredients, transparency, sustainability, and is also aesthetically beautiful."
What makes Lil Luv Dog different from what else is out there?
"I think we've seen the wave of clean beauty from 2018 to now. We've seen what brands like Blueland did for household care or Honest did for baby care, and I think we're seeing the consumer drive a shift towards clean, transparent, and sustainable, and this is the next category that's going to see this overhaul."
Tell me about the dog dry shampoo.
"We started a lot of different products at the same time. We tried finding that balance of how can we disrupt this category and make something innovative and new, like the dry shampoo, which is so convenient. Because who has time to wash their dog and give them a full blowout every time? It's just not realistic. My dog takes a full hour for me to blow his hair out."
Do you believe in manifestation?
"I do. I really do. Yeah, deeply. I'm very much a pen to paper kind of gal. I like to write it out. I believe in all of that: the law of attraction, speaking it into existence, believing it, seeing it, visualizing it. I like to hit it from all the angles, you know what I mean? Just hope and pray that it happens. This is so random and weird, but you know what Timotheé Chalamet was like, 'life is coming from you, not at you.' Do you remember that viral clip? And Zendaya was like, 'okay, answer!' I was like, wow, that's so true. I feel that very holistically in my life. So I think the more that you can root it, believe it, let it come from you into the universe, it'll come back. It's so random. I don't know why that clip speaks to me so deeply."
What are you manifesting for 2026?
"I'm manifesting good health. I'm manifesting safety for my loved ones. Peace of mind. I'm manifesting a successful business. I'm manifesting a new film that I'm going to be in. And maybe some adventure and new experiences."
You've lived in LA for over a decade. What's the biggest misconception about it?
"I think if you go anywhere in LA, you can probably find what you're looking for or what you would assume it had. This is controversial: I think that traffic in New York is worse than LA. I don't know where we get off on saying that New York isn't f*cking miserable to navigate. If you're not taking the subway or walking, you're just not moving, and there's just nowhere else to go. In LA, at least if you know the spot, there's ways to maneuver. You're not just stuck. Whereas in New York, I'm just stuck. It's just gridlock. So I'm going to say, yes, traffic is bad, but New York is worse. Hot take of the century."
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What are the last three things you wrote in your Notes app?
"This is going to seem on the nose: it's my dog's grocery list, which is humiliating but also so real. I cook for him. What else is on here? Oh god, I have 'Jacob Elordi scarf.' He wore a really nice scarf the other day for, I think it was must've been Frankenstein press, and I wanted to get it for my husband. It was a navy scarf. I thought it was really nice, but I can't find what brand it is. And the third is a reminder to buy a gift card for my family back in Ohio. For Snow Trails, which is a place where we go skiing and tubing in Ohio."
What's on your dog's grocery list?
"93% lean ground turkey, salmon filets, white rice, green beans, spinach, coconut oil, his supplements."
Can you describe your perfect day?
"My perfect day is sleeping in with my dog and with my husband and making breakfast together. We do this on Saturdays. This is our Saturday, and it's truly my perfect day. We try to prioritize this. This is our family day and sleeping in, waking up with them, making breakfast, laying around, just watching tv, being really lazy, and taking him for a walk. There's a really cute duck walk at this park in Beverly Hills. I love a walk and talk, and then going to bed at 8 pm and watching 'Parks and Rec' until I fall asleep. And taking an Ambien."
