Entertainment I’ll get the Downton DVD, says Smith

WHEN the final credits roll on Downton Abbey this season, fans will be bereft.

Not so Dame Maggie Smith, who plans to mark the end of the drama by doing something she has never done before: watching it.

The 80-year-old actress, who plays the redoubtable Dowager Countess, said she intends to invest in a box set of the entire run in order to discover just what the show looks like on screen.

She also intends to take a well-deserved rest after sticking to Downton’s gruelling production schedules for six series.

‘‘I’m going to be lying down. For quite some time,’’ Dame Maggie said of her post-Downton plans.

‘‘The other thing I’m going to be doing is watching it. I will get the box set and have a good look. I certainly haven’t watched anything that I’ve done. I’ve seen some of it, but I want to sit down and look at it.’’

However, she is open to the idea of appearing in a Downton film, which the producers have floated as a possibility.

Asked if she will appear in the film if it ever comes to pass, Dame Maggie said: ‘‘Hopefully I will be. I think the wig is slightly more tired than I am. Yes, it would be fun.’’

Speaking at the launch of series six, Dame Maggie was asked how she felt about the end of the show.

‘‘I’m just surprised that I got to the end,’’ she replied.

‘‘Just before this I had done about 10 years of Harry Potter so I felt very, very old indeed by the time I got to the Dowager. So I’m honestly just surprised that I got through it and I’m still here.’’

But she said working had kept her feeling young: ‘‘It’s very good

Maggie Smith because, moan one might, but I think it would be very alarming to be completely alone and have nothing to do.’’

In the first episode of the new series the Dowager Countess comes out with one of her trademark put-downs when she raises an eyebrow at Isobel Crawley and asks: ‘‘Does it ever get cold on the moral high ground?’’

The actress said she could take no credit for the one-liners, as all are written for her by the show’s creator, Julian Fellowes.

‘‘They are wonderful, wonderful putdowns but, believe me, they are all Julian’s. I get accused of putting them in myself but I absolutely don’t,’’ she said.

While she has little in common with her screen character, Dame Maggie hinted that she may sometimes be a little frosty if required to be on set at the crack of dawn.

She said: ‘‘The crew are always in a very good mood, which I can’t say for myself. I’d go home and feel very ashamed that I’d been gritty because it was an early call.’’

Fellowes, reflecting on the end of an era, said: ‘‘Of course I say goodbye to these golden years with a slight pang.’’

The series ends with some of the below-stairs staff leaving Downton as the Earl is forced to make financial cutbacks, realising that the aristocratic way of life is dying out.

Gareth Neame, the show’s executive producer, said: ‘‘It’s an incredibly emotional, moving scene in the very last episode. It was very cleverly scheduled that they had that scene to do, and then we clapped them all off stage.

‘‘I can tell you that quite a few tears were shed by grown men in the form of butlers and footmen – that I never expected to see.’’