Translating 19th Century Literature into Tweets and Vlogs
The Players
The Bennet Sisters:
Lizzie
Lizzie is played by Ashley Clements as a wry, sarcastic, and humorous twenty-four-year-old. She's the face in almost every video that grabs the audience's attention and must keep it. Most of the videos start in medias res since the vlogs are part of a larger continual narrative, so it's easy for Clements to jump straight into the action without any boring build-up. Since she's responsible for most of the driving plot on the show, Clements plays Lizzie as dynamically as she can on the small screen. Some of her episodes are Q&A's with the real-life fanbase as Lizzie.Jane and Lydia
Jane, her older sister, is played by Laura Spencer. Jane is an angel in human form and is selfless, generous, and kind. She works in fashion merchandising and falls for Bing Lee pretty quickly. She's very similar to how the novel and filmed adaptations treat her character.Lydia, the youngest, is the wild child. Played by Mary Kate Wiles, Lydia is all spunk, sass, and rough edges. Lydia is a bigger player in the vlogosphere than Jane - she eventually starts her own vlog when she goes to stay with their cousin, Mary Bennet (originally their sister in Pride & Prejudice). This vlog becomes very important when she gets tangled up with George Wickham. Her vlog is the audience's only window into her part of the story. Instead of eloping with him, the modern threat to Lydia is the release of a fictional sex tape. The creators created a fictional countdown website as part of her storyline, and fans were so upset and engaged that the site was almost temporarily shut down by a Denial-of-Service (DOS) attack.
Charlotte Lu
Charlotte is cast as an Asian-American and is played by Julia Cho. Charlotte is the calm and collected best friend / camera woman for many of the episodes and often joins Lizzie in costume theater. In Pride & Prejudice, Charlotte is pretty much remembered as the woman who married Mr. Collins. Lizzie Bennet's twenty-first century take on Charlotte is that she becomes Ricky Collins's business partner in a media company after Lizzie refuses his offer.
William Darcy
Described through the serious as heartless, awkward, a hipster, and an agoraphobic lobster, Darcy is exactly as polite and stiff as you'd expect him to be. He's played by Daniel Vincent Gordh. Darcy doesn't appear in the show until Episode 59 of the show's 100 episode run, and his face isn't seen until Episode 60. Gordh had the tough job of incorporating all of the costume theater impressions of his character and living up to the expectations the fanbase had been building for sixty episodes. Darcy runs the fictional company Pemberley Digital, which later became the real-life production studio the Lizzie Bennet creators used to head up their other adaptations.
Bing and Caroline Lee
Bing and Caroline were both written to be of Asian descent. But why Bing Lee and not Charles Bingley? This is answered on Pemberley Digital's FAQ page:
The origins of “Bing Lee” actually came from Hank in the very early stages of development. He noted that in the book, everyone just refers to him as Bingley and thought that it’d be silly for everyone to call him that with our series set today. Yes it’s true, we could have just referred to him by his first name (Charles) but Hank thought it’d be stronger to keep the connection phonetically, and hence Bing Lee. He recently admitted to me that at first he felt it was awkward saying Bing (pause) Lee vs Bingley, but he got used to it pretty quickly, which is what we’re hoping the rest of you awesome viewers experience.Bing is a med student and like Jane is very similar to his novel and film portrayals.
-Pemberley Digital
Caroline is the Regina George of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. She acts sweetly toward the other characters when it's necessary but then drops the act when people aren't buying it anymore.
Other Minor Characters
Gigi Darcy: Darcy's matchmaking sister who works under him at Pemberley Digital.Fitz Williams: One of Darcy's fun-loving friends. Fitz is portrayed as a gay African-American.
Mr. Ricky Collins: Awkward media entrepreneur who ends up as Charlotte's business partner.
George Wickham: The blond, blue-eyed playboy. He sweet talks Gigi, Lizzie, and Lydia, and eventually blackmails Lydia with a fictional sex tape.
Mary Bennet: The Bennets' cousin.
Kitty Bennet: Lydia's cat (also originally one of the Bennet sisters).
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet: They never appear onscreen (except for Mrs. Bennet in the final episode), but these characters are mentioned from episode 1 and get lots of costume theater treatment.
