When former “Apprentice” contestant Jennifer Murphy had the idea of singing a promotional song about being a ninja, it was for altruistic purposes.
She was promoting the “Jennifer Murphy Bed” and marketing her GoGirl Worldwide brand.
“I bought a kid’s Barbie Jeep from Goodwill and started driving it like it’s my real car,” Ms. Murphy told The Epoch Times. “Then, my character started evolving and I became this superhero with a pink cape. I became my own mascot for GoGirl Worldwide and I realized that people really liked my funny YouTube videos.”
“Things were going great,“ Ms. Murphy said. ”We’re selling Jennifer Murphy beds like hot cakes. We’re getting so many orders. I’m getting these big commission checks and my partners are stoked.”
Suddenly, however, there was a downturn. The internet erupted with negative comments as some consumers took offense and Ms. Murphy began receiving hate mail.
“I lost pretty much everything ... my Murphy bed contract, all of my other contracts with other companies, and it was not easy to get sponsors for my GoGirl Worldwide seminars,” Ms. Murphy said. “When you Google my name, there’s a controversy tab added to my Wikipedia page.”
She found herself losing money and feeling like a deer in headlights. So, Ms. Murphy returned to her family in Oregon for support.
The 2003 Miss Oregon USA beauty queen quickly apologized. But today Ms. Murphy regrets signing the apology letter that someone else wrote.
“Apologizing made it even worse,” Ms. Murphy said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “It was like putting fuel on the flank and the haters just attacked me even harder.”
The 45-year-old advises anyone who has been canceled to stick to their guns.
“Don’t apologize and maybe get creative like I did and turn it into something even greater,” she said.
Ms. Murphy isn’t the first female entertainer to experience the cancel culture.
The return of comedian Roseann Barr’s sitcom “Roseanne” was canceled in 2018 after she posted on X, then known as Twitter, about Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who had been a senior adviser to Barack Obama.
Kathy Griffin experienced canceled bookings in 2017 after she was photographed with a fake bloody mask of then-President Donald Trump.
“I was asked to promise to never make funny videos again,” Ms. Murphy said. “I’m never giving that up. Don’t feel the need to cater to the woke mob. They’ll never be happy anyway. They always find new people to attack.”
That was in 2016. Ms. Murphy has fully recovered since then. On YouTube, her viral song receives between 500 and 5,000 views an hour and the original video of the performance has 8.2 million views.
Looking back, what Ms. Murphy has learned is how vulnerable people are in believing what they read because they don’t have enough purpose in their own life.
“They feel empowered when they become a part of a club to attack someone else,” she said. “It’s almost like they’re looking for a sense of purpose, but it’s sad because they could be putting their efforts into something positive,” she said.
Currently, she is promoting a feature film called “I Want to Be Neenja! The Movie,” which streams on May 10 on iTunes and Amazon Prime. The movie is also available for pre-sale on iWantToBeNeenja.com.
“I wrote it in a way to be a feature film franchise, so hopefully a whole trilogy, or possibly an ongoing series,” she said. “There’s all of these original characters in the movie and I think that people are hungry for new characters rather than just spinoffs.”
Ms. Murphy, who stars in the film, also directed, wrote, and produced. Hong Kong stuntman Andy Cheng worked on the film as the action and stunt advisor. Mr. Cheng formerly worked on Jackie Chan’s stunt team. The villain, Chow, is played by Lambo Le.
“The film is almost like a metaphor of my own life with ups, downs, twists and turns, and Chow, the villain, represents some of the challenges and negativities I’ve been through,” Ms. Murphy added. “He can represent anybody’s villains that they have to deal with in their life.”
