Update (January 16, 2019): In September 2017, Superstar Machine filed a defamation lawsuit over this article. The parties agreed to settle the case and, as part of that agreement, Jezebel is providing a link to SuperstarMachine’s response to the allegations in the article: Superstar Machine’s Response to This Article. Jezebel stands by its reporting. A few years ago, as Ashley Cantley will tell you plainly, she was in a pretty bad place. She was unemployed, her relationship with her boyfriend was strained, and she had no one to turn to for advice. Advertisement “I was super depressed and completely alone,” she says, when, around March of 2013, she met a new friend. The woman attended the same acting school, the William Esper Studio, and lived near her on the Upper West Side. There was one key difference between the two: the other woman seemed happy. “She was on top of the world,” Cantley remembers, “And giving me all this man advice.” Advertisement That struck Cantley as both odd and impressive, given that the woman was several years younger. “It seemed like, how does she know all this? And some of it made a lot of sense. ” A lot of…