Articles
Articles (a list of many articles of Ashley Williams)
Ashley Williams (Rising Star)
Age: 24
Hometown: Rye, New York
Claim to fame: Playing lovable hairstylist Dylan on NBC´s Good Morning Miami.
All in the family: After graduating from Boston University with a drama degree in 2001, Ashley followed her big sister Kimberly (Father of the Bride) to Los Angeles. She won the role of Dylan in her first sitcom audition.
Hide-and-Seek: “At parties I’m the girl standing there with sweat dripping down her forehead who’s trying to figure out when she’s supposed to be,” says Ashley.
Can’t live without: Her diary (so far she’s filled 36 of them!) and her cell-phone. “It’s a joke on the set because all my friends are in New York and I am always on my phone,” says Ashley. “The Will & Grace people [who shoot next door] are like, ‘What’s her deal?’”
Where the boys are: “My love right now is passing a guy on the street and getting a smile,” she says. “It’s totally romantic.” – by Jennifer Sklar, Teen People Magazine, May 2003
Ashley Williams, A Great Cut
It’s fitting that Williams plays a hairstylist on NBC’s Good Morning, Miami. Until she came to Hollywood, she actually cut her hair herself. Now, in true star style, she frequents a top salon in L.A.’s Wyndham Bel Age Hotel for help with her thin, fine locks, which lie distressingly limp without help. The beautiful solution stylist Tim Burke came up with: a choppy bob with lots of sharply defined layers for dimension, texture and oomph.
(Author unknown)
Miami Nice
A year ago, Ashley Williams was one of hundreds of young actors dreaming of landing a job on a new series. Most go home empty-handed, but Williams was lucky. One of her first auditions was for Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the creators of NBC's hit Will & Grace. They were casting for their new show, Good Morning, Miami, which had secured the desirable post-Will & Grace time slot. Now they had to find the right actress to play hairstylist Dylan -- the key ingredient in the love triangle that would drive the show's story lines.
The creators expected such difficulty finding Miss Right that they wrote "Good luck, casting department" on the script. Then they met Williams. "She was the first person to walk in, and that was it," Kohan says. "We so won the lottery," Mutchnick adds.
As did Williams, who says she laughed when she first read the character description. "[Dylan] is ethereal yet earthy, beautiful, yet approachable, sweet but not without an edge. In short, she's perfect," says the 24-year-old. "I was like, 'This is so not me!' "
Williams is used to playing characters that are her total opposite. In high school, she starred as scrappy teen Dani Andropolous on As the World Turns. She then studied acting at Boston University before hitting the theater circuit. But when her understudy stint in Neil LaBute's off-Broadway show "The Shape of Things" ended in January 2002, she was at loose ends. "At that point, it's not about, 'Should I do theater, TV or film?' "Williams says. "It's about, 'Ok, we gotta pay the bills!' "
So Williams went to Los Angeles and stayed with her sister, Kimberley, 31, who stars on ABC's According to Jim. She credits Kim with helping her prioritize among the seven shows she was testing for: "She asked, 'What kind of actress do you want to be?' "
Williams's costar, Mark Feuerstein, who plays Jake Silver, the morning-show producer in love with Dylan, thinks she is a natural comedian. "Scenes that would be intimidating to a veteran actress don't throw her for a loop at all," he says.
While Good Morning, Miami had a rocky start, Williams didn't read the bad reviews: "I heard critics bashed it. It was kind of freeing, because we can only go up from here."
In fact, the creators are hoping that by zeroing in on the "she loves me, she loves me not" plot, ratings will go up. (An average of 13.4 million viewers watch each week.)
To that end, NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker recently pleaded with critics to take another look. "Good Morning, Miami has made tremendous creative strides," he says. "The audience is gravitating toward the program."
For Williams, the biggest challenge is not letting her newfound fame overwhelm her. "Things have been very chaotic lately," she says. "[Now] my life has become more about, 'Let's slow it down, take the time to try and enjoy it.' "
| (TV Guide, Ty Holland) |
Mother superior (Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Ashley Williams & Lynn Williams)Legend has it that when composer Leonard Bernstein’s father was asked why he hadn’t given more encouragement to his ented young son, he protested, “How was I to know he was to grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?” The same can’t be said for the moms on these pages, each of whom knew early on that her child was, as Adrien Brody’s mother says of her son, someone “you couldn’t take your eyes off.” Now their famous progeny thank the person who took them from baby steps to red carpet.
Kimberly on Lynn: “My mother is my greatest cheerleader. When we were growing up, she always talked to us into jumping in the water at the beach, even if it was freezing cold. She would say, ‘You’re gonna be so glad you did, ‘and she was right. She’s still that voice in my head that says, ‘Go for it – you can do it! Even if things are scary of difficult or you’re never done them before, do them anyway!’”
Ashley on Lynn: “The concept that Kimberly and I have that one individual can make a difference came from our mom, who is a fund-raiser for the Michael J. Fox Foundation. When I was 6 years old, I saw a story about children and mud slides in Central America, and I burst into tears of despair. I felt there was nothing that I, a little girl in Rye, N.Y., could do to help, but she said, ‘Oh, yes there is.’ We marched down to our church together, talked to the rector, and two days later we had organized this huge benefit. My mom taught me to be direct, jump in and take action.”
Lynn on Kimberly and Ashley: “You see, if you don’t jump, you don’t have the experience. If I could go back to my life as a 15-year-old girl wondering who I would marry and what would become of me, well, if I had even a glimmer of an idea of who these two children – and, let me add, my son – would become...all I can say is my husband and I are enormously privileged to have had three such healthy and vibrant kids. It doesn’t get and better.”
| by Brantley Bardin, In Style Magazine, May 2003 |
"BURLEIGH GRIMES"
Wendie Malick, the salty fashion editor of NBC's sitcom "Just Shoot Me," will star in Off-Broadway's Burleigh Grimes, Roger Kirby's comedy about capitalism in America.David Warren directs the production, which opens June 13 at New World Stages (formerly Dodger Stages) on West 50th Street. Previews begin May 23.
The staging is sweetened by original music by Tony Award nominee David Yazbek (The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels). The music is performed by a live, on-stage band."Set in a world where no bad deed goes unrewarded, Burleigh Grimes examines the overwhelming force of capitalism in America," according to the producers. "In an arena where the naďve and sentimental face ruin, Burleigh Grimes, a hard-driving Wall Street powerhouse, may not be entirely sincere in appearance or agenda. With a manipulative hand and flexible business tactics, Grimes is a man of infinite calculation and relentless purpose, further assisted in his financial schemes by media maven Elizabeth Bigley (played by Malick)."
Casting for the title role will be announced shortly. The company will also include James Badge Dale ("24") as George Radbourn, Ashley Williams ("Huff," "Good Morning Miami") as Grace Redding, Nancy Anderson (Fanny Hill) as The Wife Jason Antoon (Contact) as Hap and John Lavelle (The Graduate) as Buck.
For seven seasons, Malick starred as fashion editor Nina Van Horn on "Just Shoot Me." She earned a Golden Globe and two Emmy Award nominations. In 2005, she joined the cast of NBC's "Frasier" for its final season, and most recently appeared opposite John Stamos in the ABC series "Jake in Progress." She made her New York stage debut as Shimma in Israel Horowitz's North Shore Fish, a role she later reprised for the television movie adaptation.The creative team for Burleigh Grimes includes set designer Jim Youmans, costume designer Gregory Gale, lighting designer Jeff Croiter, sound designer Peter Fitzgerald and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler.
By Kenneth Jones | 03 Apr 2006 | playbill.com/news/article/98843.html