Hypable is back with more in our series of Lizzie Bennet Diaries interviews – this time with star Ashley Clements who plays Lizzie Bennet herself.

It has been a controversial week in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fandom, but before it all went down Hypable writer Marama Whyte had the chance to ask Ashley Clements, the star of the show, all about it. Hear Ashley discuss her her experiences on The LBD and her thoughts on this weeks developments in this exclusive interview.

Make sure to also read part 1 and part 2 of our interview with Mary Kate Wiles, who plays Lydia Bennet on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Hypable’s exclusive interview with Ashley Clements

Hypable: When did you first audition?

Ashley Clements: My first audition was in December of 2011 actually, which is crazy to say, because that was over a year ago. I went in for my first audition, and that was with Bernie [Su, head writer, director, executive producer and co-creator] and Jenni [Powell, producer], and thought that that went well, they seemed to like me. Then I didn’t hear from them for a month, so I kind of forgot about it.

Then they had callbacks in January and they brought in all the potential Lizzies. There were three girls there for Lizzie and a couple for Lydia and there were six Janes, I want to say, and three or four Charlottes – and I was there for four hours and I read with all of them. So I met everyone before anyone was cast, and saw who could do what. And I was so pleased with who ended up getting the parts, like “Yes, you chose well, this is great – that’s who I would have picked, excellent.”

Was the Lizzie that you originally read very different from how she has developed? Obviously the writing would now mimic certain things in your voice or mannerisms that you have developed, but what about other things?

A part of me says no, but I just saw a part of the first episode the other day and I was like, “Who’s that? What’s happened?” because I’m on this journey with Lizzie and so much has changed for her over the last year and it’s funny to look back. It’s a little bit like opening up a diary – well these are called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – but I personally grew up keeping real diaries, on paper, and when I would look at that I would be like, “Oh gosh, this is such a weird feeling.” And I had that as Lizzie, seeing the beginning again, going like, “Oh, we’ve come so far Lizzie. We’ve come so far.”

The original sides, well some of that text is not quite verbatim, but pretty close in early episodes. They had already written up to, I want to say 16 episodes or so, when we started. So some of those audition sides were from much later, were from episode 14 or something. They did, when we all got the parts, work to alter the voices of the characters – not dramatically, but just to shape with us.

Bernie and I would always have a read through – well, we still do – of the whole script, just him and I, just to make sentences and words seem more like they would come out of my mouth. Especially because now there’s six writers on staff too, so it’s also a matter of bringing all of those different voices in and making them sound like one person.

But the more we go on, the less stuff like that changes, the less I ask for little word changes and things, because everyone really is very much on the same page with who Lizzie is, and how Lizzie talks, and a lot of that has been adopted from me, from Ashley. Not to say that Lizzie and I are the same, or that she talks exactly like I do, but we have a lot in common and she is certainly written for me at this point. That’s been true since I got the part.

How would you describe your Lizzie?

I’ve been asked before what my favourite thing about Lizzie is, and honestly it is that she is flawed. It’s interesting, a lot of articles have been written about the show at this point, which is lovely, and a lot of them really point out she is very flawed and sometimes hard to like.

And I love that. I love that because she is a much more interesting character to play, to play someone who is struggling with things, and trying to figure things out, and is a good person, but somebody who like all real people, makes mistakes. I think she is admirable in that she is willing to learn from hers, which is certainly something that I always strive to do as well. So how would I describe her? I would describe her as loveably flawed, that’s my quick answer.

It’s a very good one.

But she’s also intelligent and witty and passionate, so passionate, and very loyal to the people that she cares about, and very well intentioned.

That’s true. In this version, not only of Lizzie but of all of your characters, they are less romanticized – probably because you have hours and hours to spend developing them.

We have hours and hours, and also, it’s a modern setting. Women in Jane Austen’s time used their free time to sew and paint and draw and read, and there was no internet, and there was a much smaller group of people that you came into contact with in your life. A modern setting changes so many of those things. They would absolutely have effects on personality I think, just in terms of: one’s temperament remains the same, but the ways that comes out and is seen is different when you have all this other stuff going on.

Yeah, it’s about context.

Yes, very much so.

Despite a lot of the changes that you have made, a lot of so called ‘Austen purists’ have maybe been more appreciative of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as opposed to the 2005 film, or even the BBC adaptation. That while this seems drastically different, it’s almost more in line with the original book, it has gone back to what Austen originally wrote. What do you think about that?

Well, I think that it’s so fascinating when people say that. I would never presume to say, “Oh, we’re closer to what Jane Austen really intended,” though I have read some people say that. I honestly don’t know if I would completely agree with that. I think the closest thing to what Austen intended was what she wrote, and also we don’t know what she intended. We really don’t. She’s not around to ask and to my knowledge there aren’t diaries describing “What I mean when I write this.” She let her work stand on its own, even in her lifetime.

But I’m getting off question. I think there’s a freedom in the fact that we are not period, we are not doing something where you would expect to hear dialogue from the book. A lot of people’s frustration with the 2005 adaptation – I hear a lot about the proposal scene. He doesn’t say his beautiful speech, he just goes, “I love you,” which is much less eloquent. But in 2012/2013, you wouldn’t expect all of that, so there’s a freedom.

There are times when we have quoted the book, but you don’t expect it, so you’re not looking for it to be this perfect vision of the Jane Austen novel, the way that people look to especially the ’95 miniseries, or the 2005 movie. There’s a different expectation put on it. So I think it’s very flattering and lovely when people say that we’re more what Austen intended, but who knows what Austen would have written if she was alive now. It’s really hard to say.

So we’re very much inspired by her, we very much look to her for the core of motivations and character, but we’re definitely our own thing, and especially in the last month or two, we’ve really taken our own departures – especially with the Lydia plotline, and the relationship that she has with Lizzie. We’ve really expanded on that, and done things – like there’s no parallel in the book for Lizzie giving Lydia a birthday present that tells her to grow up, and Lydia reacting badly to that. That’s just us.

And Lizzie’s relationship with Caroline Lee, and the fact that they had that confrontation back at Collins and Collins, all of these things are not canon. And we don’t have to adhere to that, and I think as we barrel on towards the end, the longer we spend in this world, the less we’re concerned with translating Jane Austen to modern day letter-for-letter, but really to tell the story of these women that we’ve created, who are very much based on her books.

Which is not to say that all the things that you want to have happen romantically are not going to happen. What kind of adaptation would we be if, “Oh Lizzie just never really gets that into Darcy, we missed it, she left Pemberley and the end.” But we’re not so concerned with letter-for-letter at this point, I think we’re telling our story and we’re going to honour these characters and their story, and will end it with that in mind.

I’m curious while we’re talking about it – which adaptions of Pride and Prejudice have you seen?

I’ve seen the ’95 miniseries, well I own the ’95 miniseries and the 2005 version. And I have Bridget Jones’ Diary – although I don’t necessarily include that in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. And I’ve also seen the 1980 with Elizabeth Garvie, I think that’s it, that’s all my P&P‘s.

No Bride and Prejudice?

Oh, I have seen Bride and Prejudice, I saw it in theatres though, so that was a long time ago. I did see that. But I’ve never seen Lost in Austen, people ask me that all the time. I never have, and once we got into this process I didn’t want to keep watching things. And I haven’t seen the Olivier version either, although I hear it’s very different.

It is different.

I’ve seen pictures of it that make it clear that it’s not set in 1812?

Yeah. It’s weird. But it’s in black and white, so everyone just doesn’t mind.

Like, “Oh, we set this in old time and we put them in whatever clothes we wanted to.” Okay. We’ll just put that on the shelf with the movie of Rebecca which also has very little to do with the book.

Let’s talk a little about expectations. Obviously Elizabeth Bennet is not only one of the most famous characters in literature, but probably a character that a young actress may grow up and think, “I would love to play.” How did you feel when you landed the role, and do you still feel any level of expectation, or have you come to terms with that?

I was ecstatic when I got the part, I was very excited. It was after the second audition that I was just so excited about the project that I went back and re-read the book for the first time since high school, and so when I got the part I had just finished reading the book and I was sort of buzzing. I was thrilled, of course. But people have asked me this before – I kind of forgot to get really stressed out about the fact that I was playing a version of one of the most famous heroines in literature.

I kind of forgot to freak out about that, and I’m really glad that I did. I never looked at it, until people started putting GIFs of my face with Jennifer Ehle and Keira Knightley, did I ever think, “Oh, people are going to start thinking of me as a person who has played Elizabeth Bennet.” I never thought about it that way, until we were several months into it and people starting pointing it out to me. I’m really glad that I missed that anxiety-filled part of the process, because it would have been probably very daunting for me if I had thought about it that way, but I didn’t.

I was really excited about the adaptation because I love Austen, and I have for a long time. I was really excited to see how we adapted certain elements, and it was a lot of fun doing it, it’s a really great group of people. I was focused on creating an Elizabeth Bennet who, while rooted in the novel, was contemporary and new and fresh, and a lot of that credit goes to the writers because I don’t come up with the words that Lizzie says most of the time.

So that’s not to say that I created her entirely. I really looked to my text when I was developing the character, much more than trying to go back. Bernie is very good at actor input, from the beginning he said “You’re going to know these characters better than I am, we want to hear if you think something is different.” And there has definitely been times when I have said, “I don’t think Lizzie would do that, based on the book, and also based on our contemporary version of Lizzie.”

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fandom can be fairly full on.

Yes, absolutely. I would also say that there was kind of a shift in the fandom when we started doing serious things, around episode 73/74, when Lizzie and Lydia had their fight. There was a real shift in fandom. It’s funny, there are a couple interviews with me that came out last week that happened at the end of 2012, and in both of them I say, “There’s been just no negative feedback from fans, no one has been mean to me.”

And in 2013, that has very much changed, which is not to say that I get a lot of hate mail or anything, but I’ve gotten a few cranky people. Which is also a strange thing to send to me, “I don’t like the way you’re adapting this!”, “..I didn’t do it, I don’t write the show.” But for me, most of our fans are incredibly positive. The fact that there are people who are so passionate about the show that they want to have these discussions is fantastic. I get a little worried when I see fans attacking each other, because I never want to see that.

But 90% of the people who would really include themselves in ‘The Fandom’, which is a really active, enthusiastic group, are very kind with each other and very intelligent, and they’re hotly debating things and I think it’s fantastic. I also think it’s fantastic that people don’t like some of the things that we’ve done, because it means that they are thinking and they’re analyzing – and also because it is impossible to please everyone.

There are never going to be things than 100% of people like, so I don’t worry about everyone loving the way that we’ve adapted these characters, I don’t worry about everyone loving Lizzie, or everyone loving my acting or any of those things, because that’s impossible. We just do the best that we can. We’re all telling a story that we are proud of. I’m very proud to be a part of it.

I think episodes 87 and 88 are going to be incredibly controversial. I’m just waiting to see how that goes, but I think that there are very important things dealt with in those episodes, and I’m very proud to be a part of something that was not afraid to go there. I’m a little afraid of the response, but I’m very proud that we weren’t afraid to make them.

Can you talk a little bit about those episodes and any thoughts you have on them? What’s going on with Lizzie?

87 is, I hope, an incredibly powerful episode because it deals with Lydia’s feelings of guilt and Lydia blaming herself for her, essentially, abuse. Which I think is just devastating, because so many girls have been there, so many girls have been through bad experiences and then blamed themselves.

For Lizzie it’s a lot of realizing that her sister is not someone that she has ever seen before, that she has had a very close-minded view of her sister, and it’s the beginning of her looking at her in another way. There are times in that episode when Lizzie is quiet and lets Lydia say a lot of things that are upsetting. I’m expecting there to be some backlash about people saying that Lizzie should jump in earlier, but what we discovered with that was that Lizzie was letting Lydia speak for the first time.

As discussed in episode 86, when Jane tells Lizzie “We don’t listen to Lydia,” it’s the first time that Lizzie starts to really listen to Lydia and not cut her off until she’s done speaking. I hope that it’s powerful and resonant for people, it was very moving and powerful to be a part of. Mary Kate Wiles [plays Lydia] is tremendous in 87 and I’m excited to share her brilliance with the world, though I am also expecting there to be a lot of people thinking that we handle it the wrong way.

But there’s no way to please everyone – I know I said that, but it’s something I remind myself of on a pretty regular basis, and I think that it will emotionally resonate with some people. It certainly did with me, not that I have ever experienced anything quite like what Lydia is going through, but I think a lot of young women can relate to being in relationships with people who treated them badly and holding themselves responsible. The element of forgiving yourself for being in a negative situation like that, I hope it’s really powerful. It was to be a part of.

And 87 is the first time that Lizzie ever initiates a hug with Lydia in the series.

It is the first time that she hugs Lydia, and it’s the first time that she says “I love you” to Lydia. She has looked at the camera and said “I love Lydia,” but she hasn’t said “I love you” to Lydia until now.

So we’re starting to go back now, slightly away from the Lydia/George situation, and more about addressing Lizzie and Lydia in the next few videos, is that safe to say?

That is absolutely safe to say. I would say that both 88 and 87 focus on sister relationships and the way this story developed, the way it got written, Lydia became much more than I think the creators knew she would become, and that is in part due to Mary Kate Wiles, and also in part due to Rachel Kiley [writer for The LBD and The Lydia Bennet] who wrote the spin-off series. And to the fans who reacted to her, and to Bernie and Hank [Green, executive producer and co-creator] who let Rachel and Mary Kate go there.

It became clear to me that, and it’s something that Bernie and I talked a lot about and Bernie absolutely agreed, that this point in Lizzie’s story – Lizzie can’t just get together with Darcy and have learned her lesson with him and have everything be sunshine and rainbows if she wasn’t going to come through and learn to see her sister in another way. It’s a relationship she’s had her whole life, and without learning to alter her prejudices about her own sister, the story wasn’t going to feel complete for me, then Lizzie’s growth was never going to feel complete.

So it was very, very important to me that Lizzie have that realization that she had been seeing her sister as something other than who she was, and also that moving forward it’s slow going. We’re not going to put a bandaid on it and be like, “Now Lizzie and Lydia understand and see each other for who they are,” and I’m very glad.

Lizzie and Jane have always been very close, they’re closer in age, and who doesn’t get along with Jane? I think Jane makes such a poignant, true statement at the end of 86 when she says, “My sisters are so alike.” It’s so fun for me. There are moments when, I’m so invested in this character now that when I read scripts, I see them very much through a Lizzie lens. And of course there’s an actor brain going on, and I can see things outside of Lizzie, but I don’t see all of them until things come out, and I can remove myself from it more.

In the Lizzie/Charlotte fight, I was so on Lizzie’s side of it. It wasn’t until the episode came out that I was like, “Oh yeah, Lizzie’s not totally right about that,” but I put my brain so much into Lizzie’s. And the same with 73 and 74, I was like, “Well Lizzie’s not so bad here.” So it’s really fun for me as an actor to realize that I was seeing something so much as Lizzie that I didn’t notice something else that was clearly there.

So in 86 when Jane says Lizzie and Lydia are so alike, that was the first time that I, Ashley, was like, “Oh god, that is true.” That is true. I’ve been a part of this show the whole time and I wouldn’t necessarily have said, “Well Lizzie and Lydia have a lot in common, that’s part of the reason they butt heads so much,” I wouldn’t have said it, because I didn’t see it and neither did Lizzie. It’s really interesting playing a character for this long and being so in her head, it’s not an experience that I’ve had before.

Really only actors who are on long-running TV series, and maybe now web series – but this is pretty new for things to be this long on the web. So the fact that I have been playing her for a year and have gone on this journey with her is really cool and interesting and I’m learning from her a lot too.

Watch out for part 2 of our interview with Ashley Clements

Images: ashleyclements.net, tumblr