Abbey ever after... Downton comes to downtown Dublin
DOWNTON came to Dublin last night with hometown boy Allen Leech on the red carpet for the Irish premiere of the second movie of the hit TV series.
Downton Abbey: A New Era is set in 1928 and follows the 2019 film, which brought in almost €200million in revenue. The new movie is out in Irish cinemas tomorrow.
Downton star Leech, 40, was joined at the premiere at the Stella Cinema in Rathmines by some well-known faces, including RTÉ presenters Miriam O’Callaghan and Doireann Garrihy.
The actor, a Killiney native, has just announced he is expecting his second child with wife Jessica Blair Herman, the star of American Crime Story. The pair previously broke the news of their first child at the premiere of the first Downton film.
Leech joked last night: ‘My friends said: “Be careful if you have a second or third movie because you’ll have to have another one!” It seems to be what happens.’
Leech’s daughter, who was born in 2020 and hadn’t been to Ireland before because of the pandemic, was very excited to come to her father’s home country. The actor said: ‘I’m sticking around for a couple of weeks. She hasn’t met some of my cousins, she hasn’t met my sister, she hasn’t met her aunt. She got off the plane and started screaming: “I’m in Ireland and I came on a plane!”’
Of the film, he said: ‘We’re just excited that we get to do another one and the response it’s already had.’
The long-awaited movie was delayed due to the pandemic, with Leech revealing on The Late Late Show on RTÉ in March last year that he hoped it would go ahead in 2021, ‘Covid permitting’.
The actor has played his character, Downton estate manager and Irish republican firebrand Tom Branson, for over ten years. The new film opens with his wedding to Miss Lucy Smith, played by Tuppence Middleton. Meanwhile, the rest of the stately Crawley clan begin new adventures after the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith, inherits a villa in France. Leech said: ‘What I love about this movie is that it does open Downton up to the world.’
Branson begins the series as a radical socialist who resents the British elite he works for as a chauffeur. But after confessing his love to his boss’s daughter, Lady Sybil Crawley, the pair get married, before she sadly dies in childbirth. Leech first broke into theatre while attending St Michael’s College in Ballsbridge, where he starred as the Lion in The Wizard Of Oz. He said last night that he owed his love of acting to his granny, who ‘very sadly just passed away at the age of 99’, as well as a primary school teacher and his English teacher at St Michael’s. ‘It was because of them I have this absolute love of drama,’ he said.
He went on to study drama at Trinity, which he described to Newstalk in 2013 as a ‘loophole’ in his parents’ plan for him to go to college as a safety net in case his acting career stalled.
‘I’m sticking around for a couple of weeks’