Droll Dowager with a secret life

IT SEEMS impossible to imagine the Abbey without The Dowager’s delicious one-liners and withering put-downs, delivered with Maggie Smith’s inimitable timing and disdain.

“It’s always fun to write the wisecracks for Maggie because she plays them so well,” Julian beams. “You never have to explain to her, she completely gets it straight away and she never embellishes. Some actors don’t realise if you add a word to a funny line you change its rhythm and it’s no longer funny. So much is to do with the music of a line and you have to land on the punch word. Maggie always understands that. I’ve loved writing for her.”

I wonder if it’s curtains for the Countess after the film ended with a devastating revelation about her health. “She’s not very well, but she’s not dead,” he laughs. “There’s no indication she’s dying imminently.we just have to wait and see what happens.

“Of course, we also have to see whether Maggie wishes to survive her present situation or not.”

That might be trickier, I suggest. The Oscar-winning actress recently said she doesn’t regard her work on Downton or the blockbuster Harry Potter series as “real acting”. She has famously never watched an episode of the show and when she was asked by an actor on set if she needed anything, she apparently shot back: “A death scene.”

Julian simply smiles and says, “That’s always been her way. She never gives the game away until it suits her.”

How very like the Dowager.

‘She never gives the game away’