At our December 2018 meeting at Sony Pictures Studio, JASNA Southwest Regional Coordinator Susie Wampler moderated a conversation with Ashley Clements, star of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, on how she first became an Austen fan, the process of translating the book to a vlog/web series and what it was like to represent the iconic character to a new generation. The illuminating discussion, including numerous questions from the audience, covered everything from humorous encounters with fans to modernizing the Lydia/Wickham scandal and much more. Read the full transcript of The Modern Elizabeth Bennet. And if you’ve never seen The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, you can catch up anytime on YouTube.
Clements is best-known for starring in the Emmy Award-winning Pride and Prejudice adaptation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, for which she also won a Streamy Award for Best Actress. Other series credits include Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, Inside the Extras Studio, VGHS, BlackBox TV, Muzzled the Musical and, most recently, SONA, a sci-fi series she created. Her feature film credits include Non-Transferable, August Falls, Call of the Void and the Christmas horror film All the Creatures Were Stirring. In regional theater, she has appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All’s Well That Ends Well, Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Cyrano de Bergerac, Sea of Tranquility, Since Africa, The Glass Menagerie, An Ideal Husband, Fiddler on the Roof and The Solve It Squad. Follow her @TheAshleyClem.