Same-sex bride in ad shocked over controversy
When Aishling Pembroke was 5 years old, she auditioned for a part in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” at the Oak Lawn Park District’s Broadway Junior program southwest of Chicago, Illinois.
“My mom was obsessed with the show,” Pembroke, 27, told me. “I think that’s why she made us audition.”
Pembroke tried out with her sister, Nicole. They landed a couple of parts, and their love for theater was cemented. They and their other sister, Shana, grew up in Oak Lawn, Illinois, and spent their childhoods performing at the Oak Lawn Park District.
“People have mistaken us for triplets our whole lives,” she said. (They’re not triplets.) “We were collectively known as, ‘the Pembroke girls’ and then sometimes simply, ‘the girls.’ ”
In March, Pembroke will star as Emmy in the Florida Repertory’s production of “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” when it’s staged at the historic Arcade Theatre in Fort Myers.
Between “Joseph” and “A Doll’s House,” Pembroke performed in dozens upon dozens of shows — at the Oak Lawn Park District, at Mother McAuley, where she graduated high school, at Fordham University, where she earned her undergraduate degree, at New York University as part of the Tisch Graduate Acting program, on CBS, where she made her television debut on a show called “Evil.”
She’s done Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth” and Mabel in “An Ideal Husband” and Henry V in “Henry V.”
And she’s done, to much unexpected fanfare, the same-sex bride in That One Commercial.
You know the one. It aired on the Hallmark Channel. It was for Zola, a wedding planning site. It showed two women joining together in holy matrimony, committing their lives to one another, celebrating one of life’s greatest, oldest, deepest pleasures: love.
And people — some of them — were outraged. They signed petitions. They threatened to boycott the Hallmark Channel. They couldn’t abide their familyfriendly channel showing two women becoming … a family.
And Hallmark, in a stunning act of cowardice, dropped the commercial. And people — a bunch of them — were outraged.
And then, two days later, in an encouraging (if calculated) acknowledgment that bowing to bigots can also cost you viewers, Hallmark reversed course and reinstated the commercial.
And Pembroke watched it all a little bewildered.
“I’m still in shock that this was a controversy,” she said. “The Hallmark Channel is literally a channel about love.”
She was frankly not sure people would even see it. You audition for a commercial and they don’t tell you what channels will air it or when it will air. Plus, it’s a commercial.
“People are checking their phones during commercials,” she said. “Getting up to go to the bathroom. Getting a snack.”
But they saw it. And it made them feel some kind of way, which is exactly what actors hope for their work.
“I think this was good in some ways because it showed us there are so many conversations and so much work that needs to be done,” Pembroke said. “I like being a part of difficult conversations. I like trying to figure out human beings and why we’re doing what we’re doing and why we’re here and why we love who we love and what this is all about.”
Pembroke had the distinct honor of learning under Erica Heilmann, a pillar of Oak Lawn community theater. I wrote about Heilmann in 2017, when she earned a nod at the Tonys for excellence in theatre education. She directed the Broadway Junior program where Pembroke and her sister tried out for “Joseph.” She directed the Pembroke girls (“the girls”) in countless shows.
“Erica’s passion for theater is 1000% why I have my love for it,” Pembroke told me. “She was literally an angel to us. She devoted her life’s work to other people.”
In addition to her theater work, Heilmann had four kids and a rare form of cancer that forms around the outside surface of the thymus gland. She used to FaceTime her cast from chemotherapy. She scheduled a surgery around “Annie.”
“The doctor probably thought I was completely insane,” Heilmann told me in 2017. “I said, ‘Well, I’m directing ‘Annie,’ and I want to be there for the kids, and I don’t want them to be worried about me. Can we just schedule it a week later? I mean, the cancer’s not going anywhere.’ ”
Heilmann passed away in October 2018. She was 43.
“Erica taught thousands,” Dave Heilmann, her husband, told me. “She changed lives. Our hearts are crushed.”
Her lessons live on.
“As a little kid I grew up loving movies. I loved memorizing dialogue and actions and then performing for my parents and friends or really anyone who would watch,” Pembroke said. “But it was Oak Lawn Park District’s theater program that first gave me a place to start honing my craft. It was more than just a theater space to me. It was a second home, a community and a place where I felt I always belonged.
Erica and Dave Heilmann were the pillars. I hope that whatever I do in life will make them proud.”
She wishes Erica Heilmann had seen the Zola commercial.
“No doubt she would have said something encouraging and then added a good zinger like, ‘Well, you always knew how to get people talking,’ ” Pembroke said. “Erica kept you humble and laughing at the same time. She really was one of a kind. I still look up to her in every way.”
Acting is an incredibly vulnerable gig. You don’t know if anyone will watch. If they do watch, you don’t know how they’ll react.
“Your love of art and storytelling and human beings has to be so great that you worry less about what’s going to happen and focus on the characters and the stories and how they can maybe help someone or be part of a conversation,” Pembroke said.
The Zola commercial, for all its hills and valleys, felt like that.
“You just put things out there that you’re proud of and that you believe in,” she said. “And sometimes you get to see people uniting together, speaking up for love. I think it will always win. Love is love.”
A good note to close out the decade.
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