Schitt’s Creek star Annie Murphy is stepping out of Alexis’ impossibly high (and chic) platforms and into the feature film game, with the Canadian actress set to executive produce and star in a new movie called Witness Protection.
Even better, the project is being produced by a female-driven comedy label, under the MRC Films banner AND sees Murphy reunited with two of her Schitt’s Creek colleagues— Rupinder Gill and David West Read—who will write and co-executive produce the feature.
The plot of Witness Protection focuses on a woman who has always defined herself by her romantic relationships. However, when she is forced to enter witness protection, she must try to figure out who she really is for the first time while maintaining her cover and keeping the criminals at bay.
Murphy enjoyed a six-season run as the sweet, yet spoiled, Alexis Rose on Schitt’s Creek—winning an Emmy for her performance in the beloved series. Following the show’s conclusion in 2020, Murphy revealed that she struggled to find roles that excited her as people had her pigeon-holed as the ditzy, bohemian party girl Alexis was.
“It was very clear that people wanted to see me as Alexis, or they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s definitely not Alexis. She has brown hair this time,’” she told The Zoe Report. “It was really, really important to me to do something as far away from Alexis as possible, even as just a challenge for myself to see if I could do something else after doing one very specific thing and succeeding.”
Murphy found the perfect fit in the dark comedy Kevin Can F**k Himself—in which she plays a woman named Alison who fantasises about killing her husband after she discovers he has blown their life savings behind her back.
Filming of the series was due to commence in March 2020, when the actress noticed she was not feeling like herself. “My mum was like, ‘You’re crying 12 times a day hysterically, to the point where your teeth are chattering. That’s not normal,’” she said. After seeing a therapist, Murphy was diagnosed with depression and filming was postponed.
Murphy explained that regular therapy and taking antidepressants helped her to feel like herself again and that is so glad she took time to focus on her mental health before commencing filming on Kevin Can F—k Himself in September 2020.
No release date for Witness Protection has been set as yet.
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