‘Downton’ actress passed on dream job
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It hardly ever happens: The daughter of a software engineer and a diagnostic radiographer becomes a wealthy aristocrat overnight, at least on paper.
Actress Laura Carmichael, who plays Lady Edith Crawley on PBS’ “Downton Abbey,” was working as a receptionist in a doctor’s office when she heard about the audition for the costume drama.
She had no clue what the character was like. “We didn’t see a breakdown about Edith because it was all so confidential,” Carmichael says. “At that point they weren’t sending out scripts or character descriptions. I really read everything when I was in the room (auditioning).”
She remembers the script said something about her being “the middle child, the awkward child,” but little else.
Carmichael wasn’t eager for the role because she had already earned the part of Viola in a touring company of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” The troupe was to trek to Dubai, Syria and other exotic climes, and she was excited about the prospect.
“A few days later my agent said, ‘You have an audition for a period drama.’ I thought it was going to be a ‘Yes, m’lord,’ a half-day’s filming, one line maybe. But it would be good to have on your CV that you’d done telly. And I thought, ‘I’m going to have to turn down this dream Shakespeare for this TV job. What a disaster!’ And it was ‘Downton.’ So I went and read and realized it was for a lead part.
“And I don’t know how it happened. I had a tiny agent and no theater; the casting director had seen me at drama school. I re-auditioned on a Thursday, and on Friday I found out they were going to take the tapes and think about it. And ‘Twelfth Night’ said, ‘We can’t wait. We have to put an offer out to another actress if you’re not going to do it.’
“So I went, ‘OK, I have to stay in the race for this job.’ I didn’t tell my mum until the following week, when she saw my name had been removed from the play’s list. But I was really confident. I thought, ‘I can do this’ and ‘This part is mine.’ ”
It was hers, all right. As the mostly overlooked middle Crawley daughter, Carmichael added just the right amount of timidity and bravado to serve as a foil for her older sister, Mary, and as a sympathetic rebel in the series, which returns Sunday its last season.
Though Carmichael started in dance, from that point on acting became her ambition. At 18 she headed for drama school. She says she did all her growing up in her three years there.
“Everything happened there. I had my heart broken there for the first time. It’s a weird experience, drama school. They invite you to experience and try things, and you become a bit hypersensitive to things in that way. Also I was 18, and I fell for a guy who was 10 years older than me and had a terrible heartbreak.”
After school and heartbreak, she worked as a nanny, toiled in a bar and served in the doctor’s office. She roomed with two guys from drama school and dined almost exclusively on Ramen noodles. “In hindsight, which is the best thing, to be able to look back and say I’m so grateful for that time because … I didn’t know anything about anything,” she says.
Carmichael, 29, confesses that she’s always been a tad shy. “I don’t think I’m a natural entertainer. … I think I’m sort of interested in the process behind it and the trickery of getting yourself to believe you’re someone else.”