If you watched Ellen—the sitcom, not the talk show—then you certainly remember Audrey Penney. Audrey, played by Clea Lewis, was Ellen Morgan’s (Ellen DeGeneres) friend with the distinctive voice, who was sometimes a little too eager to be involved in her life. Lewis appeared on the series for all five seasons, from 1994 to 1998, and in the years since, she’s continued acting, including on more popular TV shows. She’s also recently reunited with DeGeneres and her other Ellen co-stars. Read on to find out more about Lewis’ life today.
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Prior to starring on Ellen, Lewis had appeared in small roles on Doogie Howser, M.D., The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Friends. After Ellen, she’s appeared in the shows Law & Order: SVU and The Affair and the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, and as well as acted on stage, including in the Broadway play Absurd Person Singular. Most recently, she’s played recurring parts on the shows Royal Pains, The Americans, and American Rust.
Lewis has also found success as a voiceover actor. She voiced Nicky Little on the animated series Pepper Ann from 1997 to 2000 and voiced characters in the movies Ice Age 2: The Meltdown and Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
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Lewis has been married to playwright Peter Ackerman since 2000. As she explained in a 2005 interview with Broadway World, they met when she starred in his play Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight. She also talked about their two children, who were still very young, and said that her then-three-year-old was scared when he first saw her in stage makeup.
“He wouldn’t let me pick him up!” Lewis said. “You know, it’s weird for little kids to see their mom looking so different. But then he gets really into it—walking around on the stage, seeing all the props. Then the other day he says, ‘Are you gonna put your makeup on now?’ And when he does little kid shows for me in his room now, he’s like, ‘OK… turn off your cell phones and pagers.'”
Lewis reunited with DeGeneres and two of her other Ellen co-stars, Joely Fisher and David Anthony Higgins, on DeGeneres’ talk show in 2017 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the episode in which Ellen came out as gay. This happened on the show—in an episode known as “The Puppy Episode”—not long after DeGeneres came out in real life.
“In terms of ‘The Puppy Episode’ itself, I just remember the insanely charged atmosphere that kind of was building throughout the season,” Lewis said, “but then certainly those couple of weeks, it was out of control and exciting and a little scary.” Lewis mentioned that there were even bomb-sniffing dogs on set because the show had received bomb threats.
DeGeneres said during the reunion that those four cast members hadn’t all been together since the show ended. In the 2005 Broadway World interview, Lewis was asked if she was still in touch with DeGeneres. “In touch, yes,” she said. “But I definitely haven’t talked to Ellen for a while. Joely [Fisher] usually calls if she’s in town. She saw me in Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight, because she was in town doing Cabaret at the time. So we got to see each other on stage, which was great.”
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