Mayim Bialik Pitches Environment In Ad For Controversial SodaStream
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(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.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
