Ashley Jensen

(The Ugly Betty related baby boom continues.)

People Magazine reports Jensen and actor husband Terence Beesley welcomed son Francis Jonathan Beesley.  The boy already has a nickname:  "Frankie Jack".  That would really roll off Jensen’s Scottish tongue – what a great name!

Jensen and Beesley did not know the gender of the baby, and it wasn’t accidentally, it was on purpose. 

"We thought there are so few surprises left in the world," Jensen, 40, explained. "We wanted to be surprised, so we don’t have the room painted pink or blue."

Jensen, since leaving Ugly Betty, has been starring in the Jenna Elfman CBS comedy Accidentally On Purpose.  She is going to be going back to work soon.

Congratulations Ashley and Terence, and welcome to the world, Frankie Jack!

Image: Bauer Griffin

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A representative for the actress tells People Magazine that she and her husband Terence Beesley are expecting their first child in the fall.

Speculation about Jensen’s pregnancy has been bouncing around the internet for a few weeks now (including some baby-bumpy photos).  We now have official confirmation!

As many have noted, this is a little bit of life imitating art, since Jensen’s Ugly Betty persona, Christina, gave birth to what turned out to be her own son (previously thought to be Wilhelmina’s) in episode 3.15, There’s No Place Like Mode.

Jensen is said to be “excited” about the pregnancy, but continues work on Accidentally. 

Just think, this child will have all sorts of playmates – Ana Ortiz’s daughter, Eric Mabius’ son, Rebecca Romijn’s twins.  If I were America Ferrera, I’d be a little nervous. 

Congratulations, Ashley and Terence!

Image: Fame Pictures

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Never mind.

The show’s creator, Silvio Horta, told UK tabloid The Sun that, as reported, the split was mutual, but the reason was actually the lack of good story lines for Ashley’s character Christina.

“From the get-go, we found some really good stories for her, but we never found enough to service her character the way we wanted to and the way that she wanted,” Horta said.

Then, he said something that sounded eerily familiar.

“She wanted to do more, but it was difficult with a large ensemble like this to give her more. I hope in the future she’ll come back. She’s an important part of the show.”

Hmmm.  Chris Gorham.  Rebecca Romijn.  Now, Ashley Jensen.

Horta is starting to sound like a character from the Sopranos.    Beware, if Silvio ever says how important you are to the show, and how he hopes you’ll be back!

So, I guess Freddy Rodriguez is safe?

Anyway, from all the reports I’ve seen, it definitely was a mutual parting, so it’s hard to be too angry about it.   Ashley is an incredible actress, and like Gorham and Romijn, she’ll be starring in another show in no time.

And, she can stay in LA!

Image: Newscom

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Here’s Betty running toward Christina.  Yeah, I know, the outfit is crazy.  Patricia Field usually has Betty’s outfits clash in color, but the patterns usually match.  In this case, the colors pretty well match, but we have stripes and florals and a big print (and a checked purse).   Ouch! 

She is running toward:

…Christina.  Who is getting to a car.  Other photos of this scene feature Stuart, and there are still others of Vanessa Williams as Wilhelmina on the same street (but never in the same scene – she’s probably chasing them).  It culminates in this shocker, a photo I haven’t been able to get my hands on, but a spoiler nonetheless:

Go here.  Drink!

You guys certainly know by now, it’s a drinking game. Every time Betty gets fired, or quits her job, or gets arrested or otherwise detained, we take a drink.

So, is this going to be the cliffhanger?  Probably not, but these look like very dramatic scenes, anyway.

Images: Newscom

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EW’s Ausiello has confirmed the scoopage first reported by EOnline’s Kristin back in January (which we relayed and speculated about here).  According to Ausiello, an ABC insider says that the break was “completely mutual”.  Jensen was not happy with the move to NYC, and was the only cast member not to relocate.  That was one heck of a commute!  (Which explains Jensen’s amount of screen time on the show)

Executive producer Silvio Horta DID make a statement:  "While we’re sad that Ashley will not be returning next season as a series regular, she is still a member of the Ugly Betty family, so don’t be surprised if you see Christina pop back up in Betty’s life."

So, that’s leaves us with  a bit of speculation.  What will happen on the show to explain Christina’s departure?  My best guess, based on her behavior in 3.17, Sugar Daddy, is that she’s going to take the baby and go away somewhere.  Now, it doesn’t HAVE to be a kidnapping.  Don’t forget, Wilhelmina was acting like she was overwhelmed taking care of William (although the writers seem to have forgotten that she already has one child, Niko).  Regardless, I see an adoption plot line coming up – especially after that speech Christina gave Amanda.

So, what do you think about Jensen’s departure?  Any speculation about how Christina will leave the show?

Image: Bauer-Griffin

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The BAFTA/LA awards ceremony, the Britannia Awards, started in 1989 and happens in October/November each year. There are no awards given to films or TV programs, only to individuals. This year, Sean Penn, Don Cheadle, Tilda Swinton and Stephen Frears were honored.

On the Ugly Betty front, shouldn’t Christina’s baby be due soon? By my best guess this past spring, Christina would be having her baby during November sweeps.

The two Ugly Betty characters in season 3 who really don’t have much to do so far are Ignacio and Christina. Hopefully, with the impending birth and the fact that so much of the plot revolves around it, we’ll see a Christina-centered episode.

You have to love Ashley Jensen. Her accent just makes me melt (although it also means I have to watch the show with closed captioning on)

More Jensen photos after the jump!

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A common theme in the comments about the previous photos of America Ferrera / Betty is that her outfit was horrible, almost clown-like. Some regretted that it looked like Betty was “reverting”, and Ugly Betty News commenter jw took a slightly different angle (and held nothing back):

Nooooooooo!!! Bring back Eduardo, STAT!! As someone who is in the fashion industry I can say for certain that the outfit Betty is wearing these photos is TOO STYLISH! Come on Pat, Betty looks like a Harajuku Girl here. Everything that she has on looks DESIGNER. I respected Eduardo Castro’s vision and even remember reading that he felt “Betty was a hard character to dress” because her character is so multifaceted. Wish he could’ve made the “jump” to NYC!

Now, I’m not ready to fire Patricia Field before a single episode airs, but from my layman’s point of view, I agree with jw. The outfit on the motorcycle didn’t look like something Betty would wear. However, this outfit does:

Image details: America Ferrera filming Ugly Betty in New York City served by picapp.com

Now, actually, once again, it might be a little TOO stylish (the pretty floral, the butterfly belt), but I don’t know about the socks. Anyway, that color looks very good on Betty.

On a side note, this is the second scene Ferrera has filmed without her trademark “B” necklace. The southwestern looking necklace makes me wonder about what is happening between Betty and Henry. Or maybe it has nothing to do with Henry/Gio at all.

It’s also good to see Christina / Ashley Jensen. I don’t know if this is supposed to be a before or after baby delivery scene, but I did the math last year, and Christina should have Wilhemina’s baby during…November sweeps! (Funny how that worked out ) My guess is that Christina is supposed to be pregnant here.

Anyway, more pics of this scene after the jump!

Image details: America Ferrera filming Ugly Betty in New York City served by picapp.com

Image details: America Ferrera filming Ugly Betty in New York City served by picapp.com

Image details: America Ferrera filming Ugly Betty in New York City served by picapp.com

Image details: America Ferrera filming Ugly Betty in New York City served by picapp.com

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Ugly Betty’s Ashley Jensen still has insecurities about being written off the show, apparently.

She recently told a UK media outlet, “I still think I am going to get found out and they will send me home. I’ve heard there’s a favourite soap exit – your character opens an elevator shaft then disappears down it – so I scan the scripts anxiously for any elevator scenes. Beware the shaft!”

Don’t tell that to Alan Dale (Mr. Heart Attack)… I don’t think Jensen has anything to worry about: she’s a show favorite, and she’s part of a crucial story line right now.

The Scottish lass Jensen also describes the culture shock she experienced when she first got to Los Angeles:

“At first I felt like I had landed on another planet.

“I felt like a tiny person because the roads are so big, the cars are so big and there’s big bags of potato chips, the size of a 10-year-old boy’s torso.

“But they have tiny, tiny dogs. I felt really weird.”

Huge bags of potato chips and tiny,tiny dogs. I really love this woman Especially after she reveals some secrets. “I thought that American women on TV had amazing hair and eyelashes and things. What I found out is that they have all got little weaves in and false eyelashes. ”

She has also lately revealed (as has Vanessa Williams) that she and most of the rest of Hollywood relies on Spanx to look thinner.

You mean women aren’t naturally pencil thin as Hollywood usually portrays? Somebody get Perez Hilton his meds!

Source: Glascow Sunday Mail

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Early in her career, Ugly Betty’s Ashley Jensen never  saw herself as the “star” type.  She says, “I just wanted to be an actress. It never occurred to me that I could become famous, because I’m not one of those people who’s automatically going to be the lead. I always saw myself as the mate.”

She grew up in the little Scottish town of Anan.  She was an “artsy” type, wearing Doc Martens, long flowing skirts and carrying a kettle for a handbag.  “All the locals called me Dame Flora Robson,” she recalls. “I didn’t mind – it meant they’d got the message that I was going to make it, no matter what.”

She recently was profiled in a rather lengthy article in The Daily Mail.  She reveals many things that American Ugly Betty fans may not know about her.    She lives in a “splendid house in Los Angeles next door to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.”

“It means I wake up to sunshine every morning and I can afford to drink better wine at night. But I haven’t completely sold out to Hollywood,” says Ashley.  “My feet may not be shod by Doc Marten any more, but they are still on the ground. I keep a can of Irn-Bru in the fridge, a jar of Marmite in the larder and I buy Cornish veggie pasties.”

I don’t know what all of that means, but it sure sounds charmingly Scottish.

She was raised in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway by her single-parent mother Margaret.  Before finding her way to the States, she took bit parts and went wherever she could act: from village halls in the Highlands via Manchester where she worked on a TV series called City Central, all the way to a play called Uganda at the Royal Court in London’s Sloane Square.

As you may know, she ended up on the Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras, in which she played, interestingly, a struggling bit-part actress, called Maggie, a hapless, lovelorn sidekick to Gervais’s loser Andy Millman.

“I was a jobbing actress – still am,” she says. “I’d been in The Bill, Rebus, Taggart, Casualty and a few weeks in EastEnders, and so long as I was working, I was happy. I didn’t set out to see my name in lights, so when Extras became a hit, it took me by surprise.”

More after the jump!

Extras became a huge hit, and Jensen, on a vacation the California, was amazed that she was actually recognized on the street.  She signed on with Samuel L Jackson’s agent, and an offer to play Christina McKinney on Ugly Betty followed soon after.

Interestingly, the part was originally going to be a true-blue, stuck-up Mode girl, but the producers so loved Jensen’s soft Scottish accent that they had the script rewritten to make Christina more sympathetic. 

Once Ugly Betty hit it big, Ashley found herseld in unfamiliar territory on the streets of Los Angeles. 

“I was on my own, living in Los Angeles, and I didn’t know my way around, so I thought I’d walk everywhere. Well, that certainly got me noticed. Any woman who walks any distance at all is automatically regarded as a hooker! So I decided to overcome my fear of the roads there and hired a car.

“I thought I’d be safer if I drove a Mini, like I did at home, and that was fine except that as it was an imported car, and a popular one at that, they charged me £100 a day. So I had to swap that for an American-built car, which was much cheaper, but I didn’t enjoy it.

“I was also intimidated by the overbearing confidence of Americans generally. They all seemed so pushy, so upfront, and I’m just a wee Scottish lassie with not very much to say for myself.

“I do still look at myself and wonder how this wee Scottish person from Annan has been superimposed on a glossy American thing. But I have no illusions that it’s down to Extras.”

Ashley talks about her “hippie wedding”, and her husband of a year, Terry: 

“It was all very spontaneous and one thing just tumbled into another,” says Ashley.

“What I didn’t want to be worrying about was a big wedding, and having to think about all the guests and the catering – ‘Is the salmon undercooked and who’s a vegetarian’ – that sort of thing.

“My mum and I are very close, but she wasn’t there. No one was. She was brilliant. For a single mother with an only daughter to actually say: ‘Why don’t you just go and do it yourselves?’ I thought it was amazing.

“The minister was a lucky choice. He was so non-judgmental and open of spirit. He wears a habit made of army blankets and everybody that he marries has to make something and put it on it. He gives it to you the night before and you have to sew it on. We put on a very simple little bag with some roses on it.

“As for my wonderful husband, he’s been fully supportive and we’re a team. It’s been a big move and made us closer as a couple.

“He was much more positive than me about my moving to Los Angeles. While I was having trouble getting acclimatised, he kept encouraging me to give it more time, and he was right.

“We tend to gravitate towards other British expats. When I first came out here, I didn’t have many friends, but I’ve developed them over time. It’s the same with my career – it’s taken time.”

On Hollywood (and awards shows, like her first Golden Globes): 

“It was my first big outing, and for the first time I had an entourage. There were all these stylists fawning and fussing around me, and all I had to do was stand there while they put me in a stunning Junko Yoshioka dress and a pair of towering Jimmy Choos.

“I felt like Cinderella going to the ball. It was so surreal. I was surrounded by these huge movie stars like Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone. It was definitely a pinch-me moment.

“Now I’ve reached the point where I think you’ve just got to enter into the Hollywood lifestyle wholeheartedly. I may as well embrace everything that it has to offer. Although I do find it funny that I’ve got to 38 and suddenly I’m not able to dress myself or do my own hair and make-up. But I loved having someone tell me what to wear. Yeah, I’ve got a stylist, a stylist’s assistant, a make-up artist and a publicist. Why not?’

She refuses to diet.  She also gets in a little barb (toward co-star Vanessa Williams?):

“I was quite happy with my face before I got here. Like most women, I have good days and bad days when I look in the mirror and think: ‘Bloody hell, I look like I’ve been pulled out the oven too early!’

“But life’s too short to worry about injecting botulism into your face to get rid of a tiny line because you’ve laughed too much. To me, that’s a bit warped. 

Women have always had a difficult relationship with their bodies, dating back to the Victorian era when they had their ribs removed to look thinner,” she says.

“Now we starve ourselves to look thin, but I prefer a woman’s body to look strong, with muscles and thighs that look like they could run. I wish more women could understand that. I think we can be our own worst enemy.

“I’ve never really struggled with my body image. I’ve never been bulimic or anorexic. I always knew I was never the prettiest or ugliest girl in the room.

“I think I look all right for my age. I’m happy with my package. I’m short and I’ve always had cheeks, but I can honestly say that I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. I think laughter lines are to be embraced. You’re born with the face you’re born with, and you end up with the face you deserve. We get old, it’s part of life.”

I love this woman!  She’s on my list of people I’d pay money to have dinner with.

There is much more in the original article. Go check it out!

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It’s hard times right now in Los Angeles, California for entertainment workers.  The Writers’ Strike is putting people out of work, and celebrities are doing what they can to support the picketers.

America Ferrera and Rebecca Romijn from the hit show “Ugly Betty” were on the scene, showing love to their fellow workers. 

(click for larger size).  Oh, Rebecca!  Sign me up for the Revolution.

Many more after the jump…

Source: Digital Spy, Gossip-Girls.net

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