Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Mayim Bialik Pitches Environment In Ad For Controversial SodaStream

(JTA) — Mayim Bialik’s latest acting gig has her traveling in time — and promoting environmentalism.

In a humorous commercial for Israeli seltzer company SodaStream, the Jewish actress (“The Big Bang Theory”) and neuroscientist stars as an anthropologist in the year 2136 recalling an encounter with a near-extinct species: “The Homoschlepiens.”

The Homoschlepiens — among them actor Kristian Nairn (Hodor from “Game of Thrones,” in a very Hodor-like role) — are defined by the fact that they cannot drink water that doesn’t come from a plastic bottle.

Bialik then touts the benefits of the SodaStream machine to make sparkling water at home — no plastic bottles needed.

“Much as we know plastic bottles pollute our environment and kill marine life, we continue to use them,” Bialik, 41, told JTA in an email. “Single-use plastic bottles should be a thing of the past and belong in a museum!”

SodaStream isn’t without controversy. The Israeli company — and its spokesperson at the time, Scarlett Johansson — was the target of boycotts due to having its main factory in a West Bank settlement. In 2015, SodaStream closed its West Bank location and moved its operations to southern Israel.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.