HIGHCLERE, England — On a recent afternoon, the skies over Highclere Castle were a brilliant blue, but otherwise things on location at “Downton Abbey” were characteristically English.
That is to say, there were stiff upper lips among cast and crew, despite the fact that the beloved period piece is more than halfway through filming its sixth and final season.
“We’re not in the least bit sentimental yet,” said Hugh Bonneville, who plays the Crawley family’s proud but bungling patriarch, Lord Grantham.
The series, which airs stateside on PBS under the “Masterpiece” banner, has broken out well beyond the niche audience of Anglophiles and costume-drama enthusiasts to become not only the most-watched drama in the network’s history but also one of the most popular shows on American television, full stop. It has racked up 51 prime-time Emmy nominations, and its sprawling cast has twice won the Screen Actors Guild Award for ensemble in a drama series.
The fifth season, which ended with the crowd-pleasing engagement of Carson, Downton’s curmudgeonly butler, to Mrs. Hughes, the estate’s quick-witted housekeeper, averaged nearly 13 million weekly viewers — barely a dip from the previous year. So why end it now?
“Well, you know, life is a process of hellos and goodbyes,” said series writer and creator Julian Fellowes. “We all know that nothing lasts forever, and you want to leave when they’re still sorry you’re going.”
The original plan had been to end the show after Season 5, but executive producer Gareth Neame pushed for one more season in order to tie up the many narrative loose ends. It also feels right to end the series as it pushes into the late 1920s, said executive producer Liz Trubridge. “We’ve hit a time in history when things are changing. We’ve gone a long way from 1912 to 1925; that’s a huge piece of social history that has never been told this way before.”
Over lunch at Highclere’s tea shop, Neame recalled an unnamed television executive who told him that nobody in the United States would ever be interested in the series. “Downton Abbey” has clearly proved the skeptics wrong.
“The way this story is told, it’s fast-paced. It’s not Charles Dickens or Jane Austen,” said Neame, who argues that the series, despite its exacting period detail and sharp social commentary, is “more soap than costume drama.”
“Downton Abbey” has turned its large ensemble cast, including veteran character actors Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Penelope Wilton and Lesley Nicol, into identifiable celebrities. “I’ve been acting for about 44 years. So to be in something which is the most successful thing any of us will ever be involved in at this time of my life, it’s odd really,” says Carter, who portrays the punctilious Carson. “Before, it was, ‘You’re that bloke off the telly’ or ‘Haven’t I seen you in something?’ And now I get, ‘Oh, strange to see you sitting down. I thought you’d be serving.’”
For younger cast members, the experience has been equally life-changing — and not just because of the opportunity to act opposite the likes of Maggie Smith. As the spirited Lady Mary, Michelle Dockery has blossomed from a promising stage actress into a three-time Emmy nominee.
Though it can be difficult for some actors to move on from popular television roles, Dockery insists she isn’t worried about being pigeonholed as her aristocratic counterpart.
“Producers and directors, they have an imagination. I had a career before ‘Downton’ and I’ve done stuff in between,” said the actress, wearing a fuzzy pink robe over her beaded flapper gown as she sat on a tree stump on Highclere’s vast lawn. “I’m very proud of the show. I don’t think I could ever be annoyed about it.”
Joanne Froggatt, who portrays lady’s maid Anna Bates, is also eager to prove her range. “I feel like I’ve got a lot more to give, and it’ll be nice to be free to do that again, but at the same time, I will cry on the last day.”
Aware that their days together are numbered, the cast mates have begun to organize group outings, like a recent pub quiz in nearby Newbury. It’s hard to get too sad just yet — in part because few outside of Fellowes and his inner circle of producers know just how the story will end.
Laura Carmichael, better known as the perpetually unlucky-in-love Lady Edith, said she’s “dying” for her character to find happiness but has learned the tight-lipped Fellowes “won’t tell you anything.”
There are many other questions to be answered in the season ahead: Will Carson and Mrs. Hughes work together romantically as well as they do professionally? Will Daisy finally decide to leave service and become a farmer or, better yet, a revolutionary? Will the Bateses get a break already?
The sense of anticipation is high all around, said Carter. “We wait for the thud of the script through the letterbox.”
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