Ashley Jones Previews Her New Lifetime Movie The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story (EXCL)
Soap fans who have enjoyed watching Ashley Jones as Bridget on Bold and Beautiful, Parker on General Hospital, and Megan on Young and Restless can now enjoy the actress in another role. The daytime vet is one of the stars of the new Lifetime movie The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story, premiering on Lifetime on September 20 at 8 p.m. ET, and streaming beginning the following day. Based on a true story, the film centers around a teenage girl who finds herself pursued by a photographer, unaware that he is actually a prolific serial killer.
Double Duty
Jones doesn’t just appear in the movie as Alina’s mother, Nancy Thompson; she and her producing partner, Pierre David, were executive producers on the project, which got its start after she was chatting with some former models about the ‘80s, and one of them mentioned a notorious serial killer from the time. “There was a little seed that went in the back of my head, and so I went home that night and just devoured a ton of research,” Jones tells Soap Opera Digest. “There was just a plethora of information from police reports, court documents, and newspaper articles about William Bradford that was all over the country, actually. He started in Florida and just made his way all the way to California, really doing a lot of damage along the way.”
As an executive producer, Jones found herself closely involved in pretty much every aspect of the movie, from developing the script to casting, shooting, and dealing with the higher-ups at Lifetime every step of the way. In fact, one of her early meetings with execs happened while she was traveling in Italy with B&B castmate and friend Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke). “Right before we went to the Andrea Bocelli concert last July, we had to pull over in a little park, and I borrowed wifi from a cafe,” Jones recalls with a chuckle. “I’m in a sundress and a hat and my Diet Coke in a park pitching to an executive. But you do what you gotta do! Kelly was very patient with me.”
Casting Around
After the movie got the green light, Jones received a “wish list” of actors to potentially pursue for the roles, and she recognized one in particular — Sam Trammell, with whom she’d worked opposite on the HBO series True Blood back in 2009. “We zoned in on the dad because we really wanted a father/daughter story and Lifetime doesn’t often do those,” she explained. “So I got their list, and I thought, “Sam! Well, I can maybe make that happen if he’s available.’ And yeah, I talked to him for a while, convincing him to come play with us and be a part of the project.”
That was also part of the reason why Jones herself was ultimately cast as the mother in the film. “I wasn’t trying to be in the movie when we were pitching it,” she explains. “It just worked out that Sam and I obviously have worked together before, and it kind of made sense. And the beautiful young lady that we hired to be Alina, Brielle Robillard, it looked like we could be father, mother, daughter.”
The real Alina Thompson was involved with the production and helped make sure the characters and relationships were authentic. “Her mother has since passed, but we were able to get a lot of information about how she was raised and the type of relationship she had,” Jones shares. “Her mother was much more independent and wasn’t really your typical stay-at-home mom. They both had a very close relationship with Alina, but the father was more of the helicopter parent.”
Screening Room
Jones hopes that her fans will check out the movie when it airs on Lifetime or stream it later. “I think a lot of B&B fans like Lifetime,” she says. “And what they’ve been telling me is they like true crime. So those two things are definitely what this movie is. True Blood fans will think it’s fun to see Sam and I together again. But the Bold and the Beautiful fans are the most loyal fans in the world, and they’re all over the world, and they are very supportive of our characters on the show and very supportive of us in real life. And I think they’ll get a kick out of seeing Bridget do something really different.”
Check out the trailer for The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story below, and tune in to Lifetime to watch the movie when it premieres on September 20 or stream it beginning on September 21.
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