In what could be a great career opportunity, the actress who shot to fame playing the beleaguered wife in a much-reviled holiday ad for the Peloton exercise bike has won a guest-starring role on the CBS soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful,” TMZ reported.
It’s not known what role Monica Ruiz will play in the long-running daytime drama. But she herself has admitted she is good at playing women who look distressed or scared —which is a useful skill for a female soap star.
In an interview with “Today” show host Hoda Kotb, Ruiz speculated that the ad became a cultural phenomenon —and was slammed for being “sexist” and “tone deaf” —because of her expressive face.
“Honestly, I think it was just my face,” she told Kotb. “My eyebrows look, like, worried?”
“The Bold and the Beautiful,” on air since 1987, centers on the love affairs, scandals, betrayals and other intrigues involving members of the wealthy Forrester family, who run a fashion house in Los Angeles.
Ruiz’s role will be a one-off for one episode, and she’ll be paid a flat $2,000 fee, but TMZ reported that she could be asked to come back if audiences respond well to her character.
A good, meaty storyline for Ruiz could be playing a beautiful but unsuspecting woman from humble origins who marries a rich and powerful man. Given the fashion-related focus of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” Ruiz’s character could find herself held captive in the husband’s glass mansion and forced to work out on his ultra-deluxe exercise bike in order to acquire his idea of a woman’s perfect body.
After all, Ruiz sort of played that part in the Peloton ad. In the ad, she’s a wife who receives a Peloton bike for Christmas, then spends a year exhaustively vlogging about her fitness journey. She shares a video of her journey with her husband in order to thank him —or to win his approval.
The backlash against the ad was so fierce that the company lost millions of dollars and its stock dropped nearly 10 percent, the Daily Mail reported.
But the backlash has been good for Ruiz’s profile, as TMZ pointed out. In addition to “The Bold and the Beautiful” opportunity, the commercial caught the eye of actor Ryan Reynolds, who immediately contacted her for a role in a commercial for his company Aviation Gin.
The commercial plays as a follow-up to the Peloton ad, in that it features a traumatized-looking Ruiz sipping Reynolds’ gin to cope with the controversy.
In the ad, Ruiz toasts to “new beginnings.” Reynolds tweeted a link the ad, with the cheeky caption, “Exercise bike not included.”
Meanwhile, Ruiz, who is based in California, said on “Today” she hopes she won’t be branded the “Peloton wife” forever and will be able to land other roles.
“I hope people can see me as an actress. I like to do movies and TV, and I’m not actuality the Peloton lady, (so) let me work other jobs,” she said.
It sounds like her role on “The Bold and the Beautiful” could be a good start.