The TV Chick

“Hi, I’m here for Revenge,” says Ashley Madekwe as she pulls into set. I couldn’t help but smile at this statement as she kindly asked me to hold on for a moment. Madekwe plays Ashley Davenport, the party planning assistant to Victoria Grayson (the Queen of the Hamptons). In real life, she runs a ridiculously awesome blog (I’m seriously jealous of the clothes she models) and has been on shows from The Beautiful Life to Secret Diary of A Call Girl. I absolutely adore Revenge so I was excited to chat with the one who is seemingly on the outside. Madekwe had a bit of a different take on it, though. We talked about what’s coming up on the show, her relationship with Tyler and what she would like to see from Ashley going forward.

What drew you to the role?
Well, I had worked with Mike Kelley [Creator] on The Beautiful Life, and when I got the script for Revenge and there was a girl called Ashley who was British, I knew that that part was mine. Who else is going to play her?

She’s sort of the only one who’s not fully integrated into the Hampton’s society. Do you think she’s an outsider?
I disagree completely. I think she’s one of the more integrated people because she plans all of the parties.

Talk a little bit about her friendship with Emily. Are we going to learn how they met and became friends?
I hope so. I think it would be cheating the audience if we don’t find out a little about how that happened. It’s interesting because this girl in The Hamptons, she’s working for these people, but we [haven't] found out how she got there.

Most of your interactions are with Emily and Victoria, and most recently Tyler. Are we going to see you deal with other people on the show?
We always talk about that as a cast, how much we’d like to integrate. For example, I’ve never had a scene with Nick [Wechsler, who plays Jack] or Connor [Paolo, who plays Declan]. I think as the show goes on, that will have to happen more. As of yet, [most are because] Victoria’s my employer and Emily’s my good friend, and Tyler’s now my boyfriend.

What do you want to see from Ashley going forward?
I’d love to see her ambition come out more. And for her to kind of get tired of working for someone, and wanting a bit more for herself, standing up for herself — I’d like to see more of that.

What about her relationship with Tyler? They sort of came to an understanding. What can we expect with that?
He told Ashley why is the way he is at the end of the episode before last. They are still boyfriend and girlfriend. And she’s got to find out more about Tyler.

What can we expect from Ashley and Nolan. She sort of hates him. Are they ever going to become friends?
She does hate him. We don’t really know why. We kind of guessed at it. Like maybe something went on between them before. We don’t know. Yeah, she really despises him. But I hope they start a friendship, that’d be nice.

Yeah, definitely. And let’s talk about that awesome Tyler Shields photo shoot. How fun was that?
It was lots of fun. Tyler kind of reminds me of my boyfriend, who takes all the photos for my blog. And he’s always like, “Let’s do this! Now let’s do that! How about we try it this way?!” and Tyler’s like that as well. He’s really enthusiastic and it makes for great photographs.

What inspired you to start your fashion blog, Ring My Bell?
It’s not a fashion blog, to be honest. I love reading them. I probably read maybe fifty fashion blogs per day. And I was so inspired by what they were doing and I wanted to do it, too.

One of your big roles was on Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Do you think there could be a movie and would you be a part of it?
Yes, definitely. I love working with that team. It’s great working with Billie, it’s obviously great working with my boyfriend. I would love to. If that could happen, that would be amazing. But Billie’s doing a play at the moment and she’s having a baby. So it’s probably not going to happen any time soon, but that would be exciting.

What would you tell viewers of Revenge about what they can look forward to seeing? Part of what I love is just when you think you know what’s going to happen, it goes another way.
I think we’re all looking forward to knowing who the body on the beach is. I know I am. So they can look forward to that. That will happen in episode 15. There’s some great stuff with Tyler, played by Asthon (Holmes). That’s the reason why the body’s been moved to episode 15 because there was so much stuff there with that character that they wanted to stretch it out a little bit. There’s more stories to tell. So they moved the body on the beach to episode 15.

I’m so glad the show has caught on the way it has. Why do you think viewers have responded in such a positive way?
It’s just so juicy. When I was growing up, my mom would watch show’s like Dallas. I really liked them. I think people are yearning for that soapy drama.

Revenge airs Wednesday nights at 10 PM on ABC.