Dan’s first Abbey death ‘too grim’

CRASH Dan as tragic Matthew Crawley ACTOR Dan Stevens has told how the original method of killing off his Downton Abbey character was vetoed after being deemed too shocking by the entire cast.

Matthew Crawley lost his life in a car accident in 2012, days after wife Mary give birth in the ITV blockbuster.

But writer Julian Fellowes, below, initially had Matthew being mown down by a lorry while talking to his mother.

Stevens said: “I remember he had a line like ‘I’ve never been happier in my life’. And then he stepped off a curb and was hit by a grocery lorry.

“It was too shocking – it was insane. You had people just running out of trailers saying ‘No way, no way’.

“And there was a sort of mass revolt that this was just too, too much.”