he Sparkling Ice® brand, crafted by Talking Rain Beverage Company®, today announced the launch of a vibrant new marketing campaign, “Anything But Subtle.” The campaign features Emmy Award-winning actress Annie Murphy, best known for her starring role as over-the-top celebutante Alexis Rose in acclaimed sitcom, Schitt’s Creek.

The launch marks the latest salvo by a company increasingly focused on positioning Sparkling Ice, the number one sparkling water brand, for long-term growth.

“Sparkling Ice is ‘Anything But Subtle’ – and so is our strategy for 2024 and beyond,” said Ken Sylvia, Chief Executive Officer at Talking Rain Beverage Company. “This is the largest marketing investment we’ve ever made, and with it, we are attracting world-class talent, planning energizing new product launches and flavorful brand partnerships. This will be the most significant year in our company’s history as we proactively and aggressively look to expand our position as the number one sparkling water brand in the U.S. Combined with our overall investment in operational excellence, we are in a very strong market position heading into the new year.”

Developed in collaboration with advertising agency powerhouse Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners, the Sparkling Ice brand campaign is launching with two spots with Murphy as “Chief Flavor Officer,” a colorfully clad executive gushing about the secret behind the full-flavored taste of the premium sparkling beverage. Whether she is guiding a tour group through the company’s Flavor Lab or perched at the lab’s control center, Murphy’s character highlights how the company manages to infuse such intense flavors into the zero-sugar sparkling beverage.

“I’m so excited to partner with Sparkling Ice. Fun, bold and full of flavor – wish that was my yearbook quote in high school,” said Murphy, Chief Flavor Officer in Sparkling Ice’s “Anything But Subtle” campaign.

Focusing on new marketing vehicles, platforms, and approaches that reflect consumers’ changing habits, the Sparkling Ice campaign seeks to entice new customers by illustrating why loyal fans love the brand. Major CTV players, such as Hulu, Peacock, Amazon, and Spotify, will carry the ads, along with display, audio, ecommerce, and social media.

“This marketing investment, coupled with several other transformative company-wide initiatives, will set the stage for Sparkling Ice to become a world-class brand,” said Rich DePencier, Chief Growth Officer at Talking Rain Beverage Company. “Now the delicious taste our loyal fans love about Sparkling Ice will be available to a wider audience of flavor lovers, as we expand opportunities with our retailers and distributors. This is an exciting time to be in the Sparkling Ice business!”

Bringing extensive experience with consumer packaged goods and ready-to-drink products at Fortune 100 companies, Rich DePencier was announced as Talking Rain Beverage Company’s first-ever Chief Growth Officer at the beginning of 2024. The addition of this role reflects the company’s ongoing commitment to putting the right talent in place for growth, starting last fall with the promotion of Oscar Mayorquín to Chief Operating Officer, and Tiffany Boyd to Vice President of Omnichannel Marketing for Sparkling Ice.

Within the beverage industry, family-owned Talking Rain Beverage Company is already known for being fast, nimble, and reliable. With a new enterprise resource planning solution being rolled out in 2024, the company is laying the groundwork to meet future customer and consumer demand quickly and seamlessly.

Annie Murphy has joined the cast of the second season of the Hulu original series, Nine Perfect Strangers, in the role of Imogen.

Season 2 is said to be following the general formula of the first installment in a new location, the Swiss Alps. Nine stressed city dwellers try to get on a path to a better way of living with a 10-day star at a boutique wellness resort run by the resort’s director Masha (Kidman), a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies. However, these nine “perfect” strangers have no idea what is about to hit them.

Source: Deadline Hollywood

“Praise Petey” has been canceled after just one season at Freeform.

Series creator Anna Drezen shared the news in an Instagram post on Nov. 13. In the post, Drezen wrote, “I cannot believe we got to make this show. Best crew, best cast, top to bottom the dream of my life to make something this funny and unwell that went on actual television. I have heard that making a non-IP show during covid that premieres during a double strike in the dead of summer was not ideal for viewership. It’s still on Hulu as of right now, if you want to watch it you should do it soon. Thanks to everyone who watched and loved these characters as much as I did, and biggest thanks to Alex Jones and Charlie Kirk for bravely yelling about the show when the actors couldn’t. Will never forget you.”

The animated comedy series followed Petey, described as “a New York City ‘it’ girl who has it all until her life comes crashing down around her. As luck would have it, a mysterious gift from her father gives her a new lease on life: She’s going to ‘lean into’ modernizing his small-town cult.”

“Schitt’s Creek” alum Annie Murphy led the voice cast as Petey. The other cast members included John Cho, Kiersey Clemons, Stephen Root, Amy Hill, and Christine Baranski.

Drezen created the series and served as executive producer. Mike Judge, Greg Daniels, and Dustin Davis also executive produced via Bandera Entertainment. ShadowMachine’s Alex Bulkley and Corey Campodonico, and Monica Padrick also executive produced. 20th Television Animation produced the show with animation by ShadowMachine.

“Praise Petey” was one of just four scripted series remaining on Freeform. There is also “grown-ish,” which is preparing to air its final episodes, as well as “Cruel Summer” and “Good Trouble.”

Source: Variety

Great news! SAG-AFTRA have reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. This means that actors are able to resume their work filming projects for television, commercials, and movies. Congratulations to the members of SAG-AFTRA on their new contract!

Source: SAG-AFTRA

If there was an innovative test that proved whether you and your partner were in love, would you take it? From director Christos Nikou comes Fingernails, a playful meditation on love starring Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and Jeremy Allen White – in select theaters and streaming November 3. https://apple.co/_Fingernails_

Anna (Jessie Buckley) and Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) have found true love. It’s been proven by a controversial new technology. There’s just one problem: Anna still isn’t sure. Then she takes a position at a love testing institute, and meets Amir (Rez Ahmed).

“Fingernails” is the second feature and first English-language film from visionary director, writer and producer Christos Nikou, whose directorial debut was the critically acclaimed “Apples.”

“Fingernails” is co-written by Nikou, Stavros Raptis and Sam Steiner. In addition to Nikou, “Fingernails” is produced by Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini for Dirty Films and Lucas Wiesendanger for FilmNation Entertainment. The film is executive produced by FilmNation Entertainment’s Glen Basner, Milan Popelka and Alison Cohen, alongside Ashley Fox, Kevin Lafferty and Jerome Duboz.

Emmy-winning actor Annie Murphy says she’d go back to Schitt’s Creek “in a heartbeat” – but if a reunion or reboot is going to happen, it needs to be soon.

“I’ve been saying ‘tick-tock’, because no one’s getting any younger here,” she says with a laugh over Zoom call from Los Angeles, in an interview before the current writers’ and actors’ strike. “To see me clattering around in a mini skirt and heels at 75 … well, no one wants that. So, we need to get on it if we’re going to do it.”

Canadian-born Murphy played spoiled socialite Alexis Rose in the heartwarming comedy for 80 episodes over six seasons, leaving in a blaze of glory when she and her cast mates Eugene and Dan Levy and Catherine O’Hara dominated the 2020 Emmy Awards, all taking home well-deserved valedictory statues.

At the time, she thought she was well and truly done with the daffy, disgraced heiress and happy with the souvenirs she’d snaffled from the set (including the A Little Bit Alexis dress and her framed ‘pubic relations’ degree) but absence has definitely made the heart grow fonder.

“I had such a tremendously wonderful time playing Alexis,” she sighs. “When we wrapped, as heartbroken as I was and as bittersweet as it was, I was ready to try something else out, even just to prove to myself that I could do more than that one character. But I have now – and I have found myself being, like, ‘that would be nice to go back and see that old girl again’.”

Murphy says she can’t even begin to count the ways the show changed her life. She was literally in tears and on the brink of giving up on acting after years of hard slog and tiny paychecks, having relocated to LA from her native Ottawa, when she finally landed the big break she was so desperate for.

“I had a big snotty cry in the Pacific Ocean one day after doing yet another pilot season in LA and it was always coming down to me and someone else – and I was never the person that got that wonderful call,” she says. “So, it really did feel like ‘okay, you’ve put a lot of time into this, you have no money in your bank account, you have got to figure something else out’ and literally the next day I got the audition for Schitt’s Creek.”

Not only did the role give her a five-year, front-row comedy masterclass from Levy and O’Hara, who played her parents, she also learned how to be a leader on set and “how to constantly maintain a sense of joy and playfulness, but keep the professionalism”. The success and the accolades also opened doors that had previously been closed to her and, since the show wrapped, she’s also appeared as the lead in two seasons of the black comedy Kevin Can F**k Himself as well as carving out a side career in voice work in shows such as American Dad!, Robot Chicken, Praise Petey and the new animated kids film Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.

Murphy says it was a big adjustment after years of riffing with her Schitt’s Creek cast mates and bouncing off their energy and ideas to suddenly go into a voice booth and only be reading her own lines over and over again. But there were also definite upsides.

“Being able to roll in your sweatpants, and immediately give it all that you’ve got, and go way over the top, and then be encouraged to go even further over the top was very fun,” she says. “It’s the opposite of film acting when they’re like ‘no, no, no – we need to make that way more nuanced, dial it down’. So, to be encouraged to go to the extreme right out of the gate was very, very fun.”

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken tells the story of a gawky 15-year-old – a member of a family of sea monsters hiding in plain sight in a small town (their oddness is explained away by the fact that they are Canadian) – who is navigating her burgeoning powers while desperately trying to fit in with her peers. While Murphy provides the voice for Ruby’s new-girl frenemy Chelsea, the actor says she actually could much better relate to the awkward, insecure title character, thanks to her own school days.

“I was a big old theatre nerd in high school, and that group of friends were so wonderful and so weird,” she says. “It was a bunch of people that didn’t really know their place, and then they found the theatre and everything kind of made sense. It was a bunch of people with really cool brains wanting to try things out and play around and look silly and create something wonderful.”

That support network and unwavering encouragement of her parents also gave her the confidence to pursue her dream. Once she realised she was never going to be a mathematician or a scientist, and she discovered the joy that being on stage gave her, it was acting all the way, with no Plan B.

“There still isn’t,” she says, “which is a little scary.

“For a little while when I was the person being, like, ‘well, you can’t be an actor – that doesn’t make any sense, like you’re never going to make it in this and make a living’, I was, like, ‘maybe I’ll be a lawyer’ because that’s kind of acting – going up in front of a group of people and bullshitting your way through things. But, no, I went from high school theatre to theatre school in Montreal and then I just kind of launched myself out into the world of TV and film acting and worked my way up from there.”

Murphy was also responsible for one of the year’s most shocking TV moments thanks to her episode of Black Mirror, titled Joan Is Awful. The bizarre and very meta story followed her title character, who discovers her life is being converted into a reality show in real time, with Salma Hayek playing Joan. In an effort to throw off the producers of the fictional show, Murphy’s Joan does something unspeakable in a house of worship, meaning Salma Hayek’s version will have to do the same thing.

“Those words are my favourite words that I had to say in that episode – ‘I’m sorry that I shat in a church’,” she laughs. “I read the script and it blew my mind reading it, but I got to that scene and I was just like ‘put me in coach – I can do this’. It’s so gross and over the top, and it’s filthy and disgusting, but I had so much fun.”

Darkly hilarious though the episode may be, Murphy says she’s genuinely terrified by some of the issues it raises, including the threat of artificial intelligence.

“I’m really having a struggle with AI and the violent snowballing that is happening with it,” she says. “Hearing some of the most brilliant minds in the world begging the people who are expediting this to just stop and take a minute and think about what is happening and the repercussions of what is happening.

“That’s a really scary thing and I hope with this episode, it will spark even more conversation about what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it, and what could happen if we let it keep going at the rate that it’s going.”

Source: Daily Telegraph

Ahead of the release of her new film, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, the Schitt’s Creek star sat down with marie claire to discuss mermaids, deepfakes and comfort viewing.

Marie Claire: It’s been three years since Schitt’s Creek wrapped. Where do you think your character Alexis Rose would be now?
Annie Murphy: Based on her past adventures, which are so expansive and colourful, she could literally be anywhere.

MC: If there were an opportunity for you to play Alexis again, would you?
AM: Of course I would! It was the most special time in my life. I had so much fun playing that character. The cast are all such dear friends. It would be a dream. But Alexis isn’t getting any younger. No-one wants to see a woman in her late sixties teetering around in high heels. I mean, of course there are women in their late sixties who can rock stilettos, but I won’t be one of them. So we need to get on with it if there’s going to be a reboot.

MC: When fans meet you in the street what’s the most common thing they say to you?
AM: Post-pandemic so many people, myself included, had a really rough time with their happiness and their mental health. I think the thing I hear most commonly, which is the most special, is that the show helped them get through some tough times and I know how important those shows can be. For me, that show is The Office. When I’m feeling low I put it on and feel comforted and like I’m watching my friends and everything’s going to be OK or a little bit better. To find out that Schitt’s Creek has become one of those shows for people means a lot.

MC: You play a mermaid in Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. Was that a childhood dream come true?
AM: I spent a lot of my childhood willing myself to be a mermaid and unfortunately it didn’t take. So this was the second-best thing. It was surprisingly juicy and fulfilling playing an evil character.

MC: Black Mirror has such a passionate fan base. What was your reaction when you first read the script for your “Joan is Awful” episode?
AM: When I read the script, my jaw kept dropping and dropping and dropping. Then I got to the end of the episode, and immediately turned back to page one so I could start wrapping my brain around what was happening because it’s a real mindf**k of an episode.

MC: The episode comments on AI and the use of deepfake technology. How familiar were you with deepfakes?
AM: Charlie [Brooker, the series creator] usually has his finger on the pulse but when the episode dropped it couldn’t have been more timely, with AI snowballing at this terrifying rate and the writers’ strike going on in the US. Writers are currently asking that their jobs not be replaced by computers, and that the computers not be trained using their work. It’s like it is a crazy thing to say out loud. I just read an article that said that 80 per cent of old jobs are easily replaceable by AI. I hope that the Black Mirror episode can spark some conversation about the potential deeply negative repercussions of what happens if we don’t check ourselves quickly.

MC: Are there any Easter eggs in the episode that were missed?
AM: I’m wearing a Boney M. T-shirt. [They] appear later in the season.

MC: What’s a role you’d like to play next?
AM: I’d love to do a beautiful period piece, where I’m walking along the sea in a black dress mourning the loss of my last partner.

Source: Marie Claire