Twenty-five years after her Emmy Award–winning role as Carmela Soprano in The Sopranos, Edie Falco is taking on a seedy, violent underworld again—this time in PETA’s 2024 Super Bowl ad that shows her back in the family’s kitchen making pizza when a couple of shady characters burst in and take her cheese away, prompting her to weep for its return. As she desperately chases after their getaway truck, the surreal comedic scene suddenly cuts to somber footage of a mother cow chasing after a truck as it carries away her calf—real life, standard practice on dairy farms, which remove newborn calves from their mothers so that the milk meant to nourish them can be sold for human consumption instead. The text reads, “Cheese isn’t your baby. But it robs a mother of hers. Go vegan.”

Edie Falco Stars in Surprise Super Bowl Spot With a Sopranos Twist. Credit: PETA

“Once people think about severing the bond between mother cows and their beloved calves, it’s a fair bet that many of them will say ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ to cheese,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s downloadable vegan starter kits are available for everyone who wants to kick off kinder eating habits in 2024 and beyond.”

Cows used for dairy are forcibly inseminated (a sexual assault) as workers insert an arm into the cow’s rectum and then use a metal rod to deliver semen into her vagina—all because cows produce milk only when they give birth and factory farmers want a constant supply of it. Once cows’ bodies wear out after repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter. Each person who goes vegan saves nearly 200 animals each year and improves their own health, since vegans are less prone to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and strokes.

PETA’s Super Bowl ad will air on Sunday, February 11, on YouTube and on TV in New Jersey, where the hit series was based.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.