“Maggie’s lines are especially well pitched because she’s very critical and talking down on actors and filmmaking-but she’s an iconic actress and double Oscar winner. “To say we are terrible, ghastly vagabonds, and all actors are lazy, unreliable, and drunk-I think Julian Fellowes just hit the nail on the head! No, it was just a delight.” Joanne Froggatt, who plays Lady’s maid, Anna Bates, relished in the scenes where the dowager is launching a stream of caustic insults and witty remarks about making movies.
“Robert finds it despicable that a movie is being made at Downton, and it was great fun to say such horrific and negative things,” said Bonneville. I wouldn’t want a film crew in my house, so I understand.” The cast found it highly amusing to disparage their real-life profession onscreen. The only time that I ever saw the aristocratic wife was when George Clooney came, and she was very much around. The aristocratic family is not on set with us. “So it was fun to put that on its head and actually exploit it for the film. We’ve visited all of them and they absolutely hate us,” she said in jest. “We’ve been a pain in the neck for the aristocratic family that actually do live there. McGovern also feels sorry for invading the Carnarvons’ personal space. “We now know how Lord and Lady Carnarvon feel every time Downton Abbey trucks turn up,” said Bonneville.
The owners of Highclere Castle, the eighth Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, opened up their home to the Downton Abbey TV series for six seasons. Like the rest of Downton, the sequel was filmed at Highclere Castle, located in Newbury, England. That was the inspiration for why the Crawleys do not like films.” The movie’s film-within-a-film plotline imitated life at times for the cast. My father had persuaded his aunt to go to a film with him and she absolutely found it grotesque.
My father had said he and my mother were very keen on film, but his parents’ generation were not at all. “It was their children that took them into film, and I always remember that from my own parents. They saw it sort of as working-class entertainment,” said Fellowes on the arrival carpet prior to the screening. Robert calls actresses “plastered in makeup” and “actors just plastered.” The dowager says she’d rather “eat pebbles” than watch a film and adds, “The best thing about films is that you can’t hear them.” “The upper class didn’t really take to film or television for quite a long time. The downstairs servants are thrilled to meet Hollywood actors, while the upstairs family members strongly disdain the art of cinema. Meanwhile, Mary ( Michelle Dockery) remains behind to supervise a film production company that arrives at Downton to make a silent film-an arrangement reluctantly accepted by the family only to raise money to repair Downton’s leaking roof. In order to sort out the inheritance, she sends her son Robert Crawley ( Hugh Bonneville), his wife Cora, her granddaughter Edith ( Laura Carmichael), Edith’s husband Bertie ( Harry Hadden-Paton), Tom Branson ( Allen Leech)-who married into the Crawley family after years of being their chauffeur-his new wife Lucy ( Tuppence Middleton), and his mother-in-law Lady Bagshaw ( Imelda Staunton) to meet the family and find out why they are giving up this villa. The movie really is funny, and then it packs an emotional punch.” The film, out in theaters May 20, begins with the dowager revealing that she has acquired a villa in the South of France after the death of a mysterious man from her past. “We’ve been doing it for so long, and to think of an idea that breathes a little bit of new energy without sacrificing everything that everybody loves about it-that is a big ask. premiere at the New York Metropolitan Opera House on Sunday. I couldn’t believe we were going to do a second movie because it’s just so hard to do,” said Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Cora Crawley, at the film’s U.S. “Downton Abbey is just really the gift that keeps on giving. This story contains spoilers for Downton Abbey: A New Era.ĭownton Abbey: A New Era, the new movie sequel to the highly popular period drama, boasts a wedding, a birth, a death, a threat to the family bloodline-and of course, Dowager Violet Crawley ( Dame Maggie Smith) firing off deadpan zingers.