Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Downton’s star-studded swansong
Can’t wait for your Downton fix on Christmas Day? There’s a spectacular BAFTA tribute coming first – and it unearths some very unlikely backstage stories
As the most glamorous show on TV comes to an end this Christmas, only the most extravagant tribute would be fitting. For most programmes, a BAFTA award would be the jewel in its crown. But Downton Abbey, a global hit since it first aired in 2010, surely deserves a BAFTA awards ceremony all to itself. And it gets one at a star-studded event with all the cast, past and present, on stage to share the prize.
BAFTA Celebrates Downton Abbey, to be shown on ITV just before Christmas, records the glittering evening, which sees Julie Walters presenting the iconic golden mask to Downton creator Julian Fellowes, as Dame Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Dan Stevens (who flew in from America), Elizabeth McGovern and their co-stars crowd round. This is an evening of highlights – including a chance to eavesdrop on Lord Grantham and his mother, the fearsome Dowager Countess, as they discuss the family’s highlights and tragedies over the years.
Their conversation, written by Lord Fellowes, is performed live by Hugh and Dame Maggie. ‘The skit takes a sideways look at the series,’ says an insider. ‘In character, they talk about all the things that have happened over the years – the love affairs, deat hs and marriages – with a lighthearted slant.’
But the night begins on the red carpet at the Richmond Theatre in south-west London. Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, poses with her on-screen sister Laura Carmichael, who plays Lady Edith, both accompanied by the youngsters who play their children in the show – Zac and Oliver Barker, who share the role of George Crawley, and Eva and Karina Samms, who are cast as Marigold. Familiar faces from past seasons are there, including Dan Stevens, who played Matthew Crawley and went to work in America after his character died in a heart-rending car crash in the Christmas special of 2012. Zoe Boyle, who was his ill- fated fiancée Lavinia Swire, Daisy Lewis ( Tom Branson’s Bolshie schoolteacher girlfriend Sarah Bunting), Ed Speleers (footman Jimmy, who left the household after being found in bed with a lady guest), Cara Theobold ( kitchen maid Ivy) and MyAnna Buring (troublesome housemaid Edna) all join the current cast to enjoy the celebrations.
Later, on stage, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa – a former guest star on the show – performs O Mio Babbino Caro, the song she sang for the Crawleys as Dame Nellie Melba while maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) was being raped downstairs. And in a series of behind-the-scenes videos, the actors let us in on a few secrets.
Lord Fellowes remembers that the show’s beginnings were not entirely auspicious. He went to dinner with ITV producer Gareth Neame in 2009 to discuss ideas for a drama about an aristocratic family and their servants, and found the restaurant they’d chosen was closed. ‘It was raining,’ he says, ‘so we went to the nearest alternative – a second-rate restaurant in Notting Hill – and over our indifferent feed, Gareth suggested the show that would become Downton Abbey. We gathered a spectacular cast – some of whom I imagined when I was writing, others who were perfect the moment we clapped eyes on them.’
But it was far from certain that Downton would survive more than a season, so the writer constructed a finale for the first series, drawing on a story his own father used to tell about his childhood. ‘When my late father was two, he went to a garden party with his parents at a house called Hurstbourne Park in Hampshire. In the middle of the merry-making, a man came onto the terrace and silenced the band. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I regret to announce that we are at war with Germany.” It was 4 August 1914, and that’s exactly how we finished the final episode, in case it was all we’d see of the Crawleys.’
These were far from the only Fel-
lowes family memories to influence the show. ‘As a child, I remember our very modest household was firmly steered by the notion that clothes must change at certain points of the year, and these rules were closely observed.’ For some of the cast, these unspoken and bewildering laws that governed the behaviour of the gentry sometimes got too much. ‘I’m a terrible one for putting my hands on the dinner table,’ admits Samantha Bond, who plays Lord Grantham’s sister Lady Rosamund Painswick. ‘ Your hands have to be on your lap if you’re not using your knife and fork.’ But as Dame Maggie Smith’s imperious Dowager Countess once observed, ‘Without the rituals and the customs we would be like the wild men of Borneo.’
The class divide isn’t just upstairs- downstairs – it extends into the wardrobe department. Lady Mary has had dozens of costumes, many of them copies of glorious outfits from period magazines, but her maid Anna has had two, both of which are dowdy and plain.
As Michelle Dockery explores the truck where the clothes were kept during filming, she almost swoons. ‘This is where all the magic happens,’ she mur- murs, running her hand along an endless rack of dresses. ‘This is my rail,’ she says, before pointing out two items at the end, ‘... and this is Anna’s.’ The clothing can be unforgiving though, and some costumes are so painful the actors have been reduced to tears. ‘Corsets are very uncomfortable,’ says Laura Carmichael. ‘Michelle and I joke about having a little “corset cry” when we’re tired.’
Costume designer Anna Robbins explains that the clothes do more than look wonderful – they help tell the story of the era. ‘With the Jazz Age coming in during the 1920s there was a real movement and fluidity to the dresses. As a designer, it gives you a journey to take the characters on.’
In the period the show has covered a real lady didn’t wear make-up, reveals Nic Collins, the show’s make-up designer, because in the 1920s rouge and lipstick were for ‘painted trollops’ or prostitutes. ‘Viewers don’t realise how much work goes into making somebody look like they have no make-up on,’ he says. Because today’s cameras are merciless and will pick out every wrinkle and pimple, the actresses were literally airbrushed: colour was applied in fine jets to make the skin gleam like porcelain without leaving tell-tale traces of powder. But the Crawley women would have worn an early form of mascara, rimming their eyes with soot. Since that isn’t a good look for TV, the cast compromised by wearing false eyelashes.
The hairpieces often worked just as hard as the cast. Lady Mary’s bob was cut exactly as it would have been after the First World War, but the rigid waves and curls of her sister Edith’s hair have been equally authentic: it’s called a Marcel wave, named after its creator, hairdresser Monsieur Marcel.
Women managed this in the 1920s with hair tongs, which they heated in the oven. The Downton stars have worn a series of wigs. ‘The hair for Edith has been epic,’ says Lau ra Ca rmichael. ‘ She’s gone through a lot of different styles... slightly new but not too different.’ Lady Rose’s golden curls might have looked real, but they were a wig too – Lily James is dark-haired. ‘It’s a real work of art,’ she says admiringly.
Hats and hair make a tricky combination, and not only on TV. With so much attention to the wigs, it might seem disastrous that most of the female cast covered theirs with hats, even when indoors. But Penelope Wilton, who plays Isobel Crawley, reveals that one historical detail affected many of her scenes – ladies often did not dare remove their hats when out visiting, for fear of exposing a squashed hairdo. ‘If you did,’ she laughs, ‘you had terrible hat hair, so everyone kept their hats on. It’s fascinating.’
And there was another reason: hats were held in place by an elaborate system of pins, sometimes as many as 15, which would be applied by the lady’s maid. Once the hat came off, there was no chance of getting it back on unaided.
If you want to see BAFTA say ‘Hats off!’ to the show that’s redefined period drama – and discover what Hugh Bonneville and Dame Maggie really think of their extended TV family – make sure you don’t miss it.
‘The actresses were literally airbrushed with make-up’