Playback is proud to present the 2025 cohort for our annual 10 to Watch. Click here to see all 10 profiles.

Writer and producer Marushka Jessica Almeida has rapidly established themselves as an exciting new voice in comedy in Canada.

“They’re not just a creator, they’re a powerhouse and a community builder,” Kathryn Emslie, executive lead, programs at the Canadian Film Centre (CFC), tells Playback Daily. “They defy categorization.”

Almeida broke onto the scene in 2024 with the CBC Gem short-form series Get Up, Aisha, created and produced with their collaborators Nisha Khan and Rabiya Mansoor. The series has racked up several accolades, including the grand prize at T.O. Webfest and the Carrie Hunter Emerging Talent Prize at the Banff World Media Festival’s Rockie Awards.

They’ve also been steadily building up their resume working in the writers’ rooms for CBC’s Saint-Pierre, Crave’s Made for TV with Boman Martinez-Reid and Syfy’s Revival. They were a CFC resident at the Centre’s Comedy Story Room Intensive program in 2024, and are now in early development on two series with Crave.

“Marushka is immediately authentic and has a very disarming sense of humour that I love,” says Georgia Shearman, director, scripted development at Lionsgate Canada, who worked with Almeida in various capacities when they were a development executive at Bell Media and Circle Blue Entertainment.

“Their voice is very distinct, and there’s a specificity in their comedy that I think is quite rare,” she continues. “You can really tell when writers are trying to emulate or project a type of voice, and Marushka doesn’t do that.”

Almeida’s path to film and TV hasn’t been so linear. As they put it, “I don’t think I chose this industry, it chose me.”

They fought their creative instincts at first. Born in Kingdom of Bahrain, Almeida started writing at age 12, which they say their parents encouraged, but they opted to pursue a more “stable” career as an accountant.

“I worked in accounting for maybe four or five years … and I was like, ‘I hate this. It is so boring,'” says Almeida. “I quit, and then I moved to India, where I worked in the comedy [and music] business scene.”

Taking a job as a finance controller, Almeida was soon on the periphery of the industry. They found themselves in the writers’ rooms of local Indian shows at Prime Video and Netflix. “[Executives] would bring me into these rooms to help pitch ideas and dialogue bits because they thought I was funny,” says Almeida.

Wanting to explore more of the music business, they enrolled at the Berklee College of Music’s Valencia campus in Spain. “My boss was like, ‘Why are you going to Europe? It’s a dying market. Consider North America,'” they recall.

At the time, however, it was 2018, and going to Trump’s America felt “dystopian.” So they went for the next best thing: Canada.

They were approved for an international student visa and enrolled at the Harris Institute’s music business program, but very quickly lost interest. Knowing they had to be in school to maintain their visa, Almeida discovered Humber College’s Television Writing and Producing program and enrolled for the 2018-19 academic year. They haven’t looked back since.

Almeida connected with Mansoor and Khan in their early days in Canada via a Facebook writing group. The trio “immediately got each other,” and started brainstorming ideas for a web series to apply for the Independent Production Fund’s Short Form Series Production Program. That led to the concept for Get Up, Aisha, about a high-functioning South Asian woman secretly battling depression.

The trio produced the series under iThentic, and Almeida, Mansoor and Khan ended up taking a lead role in both the creative and producing aspects of the show. It would take nearly three years to raise all of the financing and secure CBC Gem as the platform, but the series eventually went to camera in 2022.

Almeida recalls this as a busy time. They were facing deportation if they weren’t approved as a permanent resident, so some of their lunch breaks were spent on the phone with an immigration lawyer.

Their citizenship status was also the biggest early barrier to breaking into the industry. According to Almeida, networks were already keen to work with them, but they had to rescind the offers once they saw Almeida wasn’t a permanent resident. However, Almeida was able to work on web series and predevelopment rooms because of differences in the tax credit requirements, however, which led to a string of producing and writing credits on shows like Gem’s Revenge of the Black Best Friend and Homeschooled and Super Channel’s Streams Flow From a River.

The floodgates opened when they got their permanent resident status in 2023. “It was immediately back to back to back,” they recall. “I was on Made for TV, then I was on Saint-Pierre, then I was at the CFC, then I went into Revival. It was non-stop.”

Almeida says they had to make a choice between going to the CFC or staying with Saint-Pierre if the series got the greenlight, but it became no contest when they found out Anthony Q. Farrell was leading the room. “Anthony is one of the kindest, fun-loving people in this business,” says Almeida. “I really wanted to learn how to lead with kindness because he does that so easily, but at the same time, he’s such a leader, you want to follow him. That was the best decision that I ever made.”

Emslie recalls interviewing Almeida with Farrell when they were narrowing down the candidates. “They were vulnerable and funny and open,” she says of Almeida. “The conversation was like none of the other interviews that we were doing. You automatically felt in the presence of someone who was grounded, clear-headed and comfortable in their own creative skin.”

Emslie says “there was always a ton of laughter” and “competing for airtime” during the intensive, but it was between the laughs where Almeida thrived. “There were those little silent moments, and then I would hear Marushka’s voice say something very quietly, and the room would erupt into extreme laughter,” she says. “That’s what it’s like to work with Marushka.”

Now, the sky’s the limit for Almeida. They are in early development on two projects with Crave. The first, Bad Accountant, is being developed with Khan and Mansoor under their company Cult Following Pictures, which they founded in 2024.

Taking loose inspiration from Almeida’s professional history, Bad Accountant follows a math genius who unwittingly takes on an accounting job at a front for the Indian mafia. Children Ruin Everything creator Kurt Smeaton is attached as an executive producer, with financing already secured from the Bell Fund’s Slate Development Program and predevelopment funds from the Canada Media Fund through Bell Media’s envelope.

Almeida is also independently developing the dark rom-com Killer Convenience at Crave, which follows the unconventional love story between a convenience store clerk and a serial killer. “[Both projects] have this visual aesthetic that Bell Media really wants in their comedies,” says Almeida.

This month, Almeida was selected as a fellow for the Queer Muslim Project’s QueerFrames Screenwriting Lab. They’re bringing their feature script Stacy’s Mom, a horror centred on a 19-year-old who discovers that her hot neighbour is a soul-sucking succubus.

In late summer, Almeida went to Sicily to participate in the short-form program Terre Di Cinema, where 12 directors from across the globe are selected to shoot short films on location in Italy using 35mm film, with the support of veteran cinematographer Vincenzo Condorelli. They shot a proof-of-concept titled The Portrait, about a struggling painter, also utilizing a grant from the Canada Arts Council.

Part of the appeal for Almeida was that each participating director got the opportunity to work on one another’s projects. “What was really rewarding is seeing people come together as a team,” says Almeida. “I want to make cool things with cool people … that creative relationship is something that really fulfills me.”

Image courtesy of Marushka Jessica Almeida