Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey (3 page)

Through their partnership, Neame has discovered the sheer breadth of Fellowes’ talent as a writer. ‘I knew he could bring that world to life like nobody else,’ he says. ‘A massive part of the show’s success has been his extraordinary ability to write romance, hatred, rivalry, love, jealousy, laugh-out-loud humour and tragedy.’

The balance of all these elements within the scripts is delicately judged. ‘In a sense, we go for chuckles rather than guffaws,’ says Fellowes. ‘Once you are making a comedy, you’ve gone into a different place in people’s minds. We have to stop at the threshold.’ As he sees it, the humour has to fit with the reality of the stories and the characters. ‘We have established that Violet, for instance, is quite a witty woman and so we can give her cracks to make without disturbing her reality, because that is who she is. You could say the same for Mrs Patmore. So we’ve got two women above and below stairs who provide a lot of the humour.’

Certainly, some of their comic lines are now firmly established in popular culture, from Violet’s withering ‘Don’t be defeatist dear, it’s very middle class’ to Mrs Patmore’s complaint that a ringing phone is ‘like the cry of a banshee’ – just one of her choice phrases.

‘She relishes a good line,’ says Lesley Nicol, who plays the cook. ‘I think she’s just one of those women who picks up and connects to language, and uses it. She’s got some rather learned phrases. We are all a fan of
contra mundi
[against the world] – we’d never heard that phrase before!’ It is this light touch that offers some much-needed relief for the emotion played out on screen.

Among most period dramas,
Downton
stands out in that it is not a literary adaptation, allowing for some delicious tension around the ‘will they, won’t they?’ romances of Mary and Matthew, Sybil and Branson, Anna and Mr Bates. (These relationships have now been resolved, but these will surely not be the last couples we will see come together on screen.)

A sizeable chunk of the audience seems to suspect that tender feelings linger in the most unlikely of places. ‘I enjoy the relationship with Mrs Hughes,’ says Jim Carter (Mr Carson). ‘And I love the fact that people who watch the programme speculate as to whether there is a romantic link between Carson and Mrs Hughes.’ But will they ever get together? ‘Everybody wants to dredge up a romance!’ says Phyllis Logan. ‘I like their relationship the way it is, and I know they are very fond of each other. Who knows what may occur?’

Romance aside, the show’s originality means it can offer up true shocks to the audience – notably the deaths of William, Sybil and Matthew.
Downton
’s fourth series opens six months after a car crash claimed the life of Matthew Crawley just as he had become a father. As Matthew’s widow, Mary now faces the challenge of building a life for herself and her baby, George.

‘That was the hook we left the audience with at the end of series three, with that very long-held shot of her with her newborn baby, not even knowing that she’s a widow,’ says Neame. ‘Inevitably, there is going to be male interest in this eligible, beautiful young widow. How she reacts to that, how people respond to her and how we see her move on in her life without Matthew is going to be very interesting.’

There was a clear decision to reflect the emotional impact of the loss on all members of the family, says David Evans, who, as lead director for series four, directed its opening episode. ‘It was exciting to work on this because it starts so firmly with the household as grief-stricken as they were when Matthew died,’ he says. ‘I was struck by its emotional honesty. It’s the first episode of a new series, but Julian has not flinched from reintroducing us to the characters at their lowest.’

Penelope Wilton (Isobel) was particularly relieved to find this was the case for her character, who has been left grieving for her son. ‘The death knocked her sideways, as it would any mother,’ she says. ‘In a lot of series, when someone dies everyone gets over it immediately. What Julian’s done very well is that he’s left Mary and myself having a very difficult time, which is much more realistic.’

A shadow has fallen over the whole house. Filming the opening episode, Evans had a note for the cast to remind them to have the loss in mind. ‘The advice was to keep the tone sombre,’ remembers Ed Speleers (Jimmy). ‘Everyone is just a little bit quieter.’

Yet while the tragedy might loom foremost as series four begins, the show remains, as always, a multi-strand story, with a plot that cannot be predicted. Some members of the cast love this unknown element in the development of their character’s storylines and deliberately try to avoid getting advance notice of the twists and turns of the plot to come. Others, however, are honest about their desire to uncover spoilers at every opportunity! ‘I’m terrible, I want to know everyone’s storyline,’ Laura Carmichael (Edith) says. ‘It’s like gossip, “Have you heard what is happening to this character?” But Phyllis doesn’t want to know. She’s always hushing people if they’re reading the scripts on set!’

The show involves a large ensemble of characters, which means that there is always much to learn about those living above and below stairs – for the audience but also for the cast. Even four series in, for some of the actors there are details of the lives of their characters which are still being revealed through each new script. ‘I don’t know what’s around the corner,’ says Charles Edwards, returning as Edith’s love interest Michael Gregson. ‘Very occasionally, you will receive a script for an episode and there’s a new piece of information for the character which is a surprise to you. It’s rather exciting.’ Elizabeth McGovern found the visit of Cora’s mother, Martha, played by Hollywood legend Shirley MacLaine, a particular revelation in series three. ‘She’s a hoofer, a kind of dancer and chorus girl who made good. That taught me a lot about Cora,’ she says. ‘I was never sure if she was a blueblood American or just the daughter of a very, very rich guy. It became clear to me that Cora’s fortune was not one that goes back to the
Mayflower
!’

Even Mr Carson, always correct as butler, was revealed to have had a slightly racier past spent treading the boards. ‘It broadens the scope of the character,’ says Jim Carter. ‘I’m a fixture of the house. Unlike Anna or Thomas, who’ve had varied love lives and excitement, Carson doesn’t have much of that. It was nice to explore.’

Yet there is always an internal logic to the decisions the characters make and the paths they follow. ‘When Julian takes a character in a different direction, it’s not really a new direction, it’s just another layer of onion skin being peeled off,’ says Hugh Bonneville. For instance, Michelle Dockery believes that Mary has strengthened before our eyes from ‘quite a spoilt, petulant young girl’ to a softer, yet stronger woman. At the same time, her character retains her bite. ‘Mary still has that incredibly snobbish edge to her,’ she says. ‘As much as she’s grown and become more vulnerable as the series has gone on Julian never leaves out that side of her that’s still a bit of a snob. I like seeing that.’

As Lesley Nicol puts it, ‘What’s nice about Julian’s writing is that he has allowed everyone to develop a side of their character that was there to begin with, but which becomes more evident with every series.’

Crucially, it is always easy for the viewer to connect with these people who lived the best part of a century ago. ‘Ultimately, the show is about relationships, and a lot of the issues in
Downton
are ones that we face today: somebody falling in love, or falling in love with the wrong person, or experiencing rivalry at work,’ says Joanne Froggatt. ‘I think the period that it’s set in is near enough to our time that it feels familiar to us, as well as being very different. There’s a real array of characters too, so there’s somebody to love – or to love to hate. It ticks a lot of boxes. It’s a period script, but in a very modern way.’

The script, of course, is just words on a page until it is brought to life by these flesh-and-blood people. The hard work to achieve this was over before an episode had ever aired, with the creators working with the casting director, Jill Trevellick, to assemble the cast.

Some parts were decided through straight offers to the more established names, such as Hugh Bonneville and Dame Maggie Smith. ‘It was one of those funny things when, for most of the roles that are played by established recognisable actors, we got our first choice,’ says Fellowes. ‘Maggie signed up, Hugh signed up, Elizabeth signed up and then the momentum was going. We were incredibly lucky.’

As much thought went into casting the junior roles, but the actors were chosen through auditions. ‘We spent a few months trying to get the dynamic right between all of them,’ says Brian Percival, lead director on the first series. For him, Sophie McShera – attending her audition in a maid-like outfit of a black cardigan with a white lace collar – stood out among the would-be Daisies. ‘We’d seen a lot of people and they were fine but they just weren’t right,’ he says. ‘She was fantastic straightaway. And Jo [Froggatt] too. She has all the right qualities for Anna, very sympathetic, but at the same time very beautiful, with an honest and trust-worthy feel about the way that she plays the character.’

Since
Downton
is a far from static world, bringing the scripts to life demands a near-constant process of casting as major and minor characters arrive and depart. Unlike American series, which tend to lock in their cast for five or seven years,
Downton
works, as is standard in the UK, on contracts that ‘option’ (lay claim to) an actor for up to three years. The show has no option on Maggie Smith, notes Fellowes, it being ‘entirely up to her whether she wants to continue or not.’ For some of the cast the end of series three was the time when they decided to move on – with an explosive impact on the plot in one case. ‘As much as we didn’t want to lose Dan Stevens [Matthew], ironically his leaving ended up being the best thing that could happen to us in terms of new storylines,’ says Neame. ‘The scripts are all the stronger for Mary being back at square one again.’

As for finding new cast members, Fellowes and the show’s producers have the final say; the producers attend the auditions but film each one so that Fellowes can watch them on DVD later. The director of the relevant episodes also has some input, alongside the casting director. Cara Theobold, playing kitchen maid Ivy, is one of the cast who has most recently been through this process, via three auditions during her final year at drama school. ‘It was my first professional job,’ she says. ‘The perfect part happened to be the one that I auditioned for first.’ That didn’t mean she avoided a nail-biting wait, however. ‘I had to go home at Christmas and sit and watch the special on TV. I knew I had a recall, but nothing more. I had no expectations, I just thought it was a good experience. And here I am.’

The new arrivals are not only those in front of the camera; each series boasts multiple directors, as the demands of its timetable mean that at any point one director will be in pre-production, another in the midst of filming and the third hard at work in the edit suite. Each one may return for future episodes – their own filming schedules allowing – but the producers like the variety, as it adds to the feeling of freshness and energy on set. The first to shoot was Brian Percival, who won an Emmy for his work as lead director on series one and returned to direct on the second and third series.

Of course, as cast and crew gathered together on set, no one knew how the show would be received. The first scene shot was a courtyard chat between Siobhan Finneran and Rob James-Collier, playing scheming servants O’Brien and Thomas – chilly in every way. ‘It was minus six on a February morning,’ Percival says with a laugh. ‘We thought, “Oh well, this is the start of a journey!” It was nothing spectacular or grand; you tend to start with small scenes to get everyone settled in. There’s always a nervous energy about first days.’

Throughout the process, he knew it was crucial to pique the viewers’ interest. ‘I thought if we can keep the audience till the end of the first act – which is about ten minutes in – then we’ve got them,’ he says. ‘So we tried to create a rollercoaster feel and introduced pretty much the whole cast, with the exception of Violet. I had to shoot the episode in a way that would not let the audience stop for breath or, worse, reach for the remote! I hoped they’d be hooked and we’d go from there.’