Our beloved show, cast, and crew took home the green again this year when they won the SAG award for best Ensemble Cast of a Drama Series last night! Lesley Nicol gave the sweetest acceptance speech, sans the cursing euphemisms Phyllis Logan hilariously delivered when she took the mic a few years back because apparently the French doors have already been shut and Downton dropped the mic for their final series. Boom.
You can watch the acceptance speech below, and click here to watch the cast's interview in the press room.
Here are some wonderful HQ photos, as always check out the always amazing Far Far Away site for hundreds more red carpet and backstage pics!
The Wife was notably absent from the awards for obvious reasons, but she and Laura celebrated right along with their co-stars and crew
I caught up with Lady Mary at Target as well! I had heard people in the US were already getting their season 6 DVDs and Blu-Rays but I was still surprised that I found it in stores already. Now I'm not a marketer, press agent, or whoever is responsible for TV promotions and sales, but doesn't it defeat the purpose to release the DVD while the show is still airing on television? What kind of a hit is PBS going to take now that the honest people of America who didn't pirate the show already can buy the disks without watching and waiting through the next month's episodes? Someone somewhere fucked up...but thanks!
Hello dear...
The Target DVD comes with an adorable little Post-It pad of quotes
Turned a corner and was face to face with The Wife. She caught slippin' at Walmart. A welcome ambush nonetheless; I get geeked when I see DA shit in public.
Downton Abbey fans who have been keeping up with the series for over half a decade are anxiously waiting for the upcoming season premier. It's an opportunity to rub elbows with the Earl and Countess of Grantham a few more times before the final episode hits the airwaves this winter. However, Activision is giving Downtonians the chance to spend a little extra time with the Crawley family in a brand new interactive game. Downton Abbey: Mysteries of the Manor hits select Apple, Android, or Fire devices today.
In Mysteries of the Manor, you'll step into the role of a newly hired staff member who was brought in to investigate a mysterious burglary. An intruder has ransacked the abbey, putting the Crawley's family fortune in jeopardy. You'll need to search each room and assemble the evidence if you want to get to the bottom of this whodunit.
Returning items to their rightful owners is a good way to earn the trust of the estate's residents, and it will lay foundation for the abbey's eventual restoration. But choose your friends wisely. In a place where everyone has something to hide, discretion is always important.
Fan of the series will enjoy monthly content updates (including a Christmas update, obviously) and compete with friends on social leaderboards to see who can restore more of the abbey's prized possessions to their former glory.
Downton Abbey: Mysteries of the Manor is available today for select Apple, Android, and Fire devices. And best of all, it's free...
I am Mrs. Hughes and I think this is spot on in my life and in my career. In a nutshell, I'm not going to put up with your bullshit, but if I didn't care about you, I wouldn't be sitting here listening to your bullshit in the first place. I'll listen, I'll set you straight, and then I will sit by silently as you realize I was right and I will not gloat about it...sometimes I will not gloat about it...other times I will yell out "I win!" and dance a jig. This has pissed off some of my clients. But I don't care, I'm Mrs. Hughes.
Click here to take the quiz and find out what DA character you are!
Congrats to the always fabulous cast and crew for nabbing the Best Drama Series award for the 4th time at the National Television Awards...but we never doubted them for a second!
Photos of the cast backstage, Chris Croucher sporting the statue and Jessica Morris just trying to jack it...check out the short interview backstage, and you can head over to my Tumblr where I reblogged video of the award presentation!
How Downton Abbey's Producers Planned the Show's Most Satisfying Wedding Yet By Julie Miller
In one of the most joyous episodes of Downton Abbey’s six-season run, Carson and Hughes—the estate’s trusty mother and father figureheads—were wedded in a sweet ceremony that felt like as much of a treat for audience members as it did for the downstairs characters celebrated. Since the nuptials featured two of the drama’s most beloved personalities, and because the wedding could have very well been the series’ last, Downton Abbey producer Liz Trubridge told us last week by phone how the cast and crew took extra care to make the vows special.
“The director actually put in some extra beats in the episode about the preparation for the wedding,” Trubridge said of building anticipation for the vows. While episodes usually flit from ensemble character to character, producers were happy to linger extra long on Carson and Hughes on, and leading up to, their happy day. “We showed the gardener going and cutting some flowers and just little things like that that could really build up the moment and make it ours, because I think we along with everyone else wanted Carson and Mrs. Hughes to finally get together. We added little bits of visuals to help all that along.”
Producers, who take great pride in Downton Abbey’s historical accuracy, also researched servant-class weddings of the 1920s era.
“We were surprised at just how lavish [they] were,” said Trubridge. “It made us laugh because they were very lavish and very carb heavy. There was lots of pies, breads, potatoes, and jellies—obviously because they were cheaper. Of course we don't actually see the characters eating them [in the episode], which I think the actors were very pleased about, because there were some sprays we had to apply to make the food look a certain way, and it was pretty heavy stuff to be eating all day. But it still looked marvelous, placed on those high display plates.”
Asked if they took any factual liberties with the storyline, Trubridge told us, “Not really. We had a lot of it scripted about the fact that Carson isn't even aware he needs an usher and the footman.” Another fact-based wedding detail: “Button holes were actually slightly larger for the servants than they would have been for the upstairs people, and that was just a little note that I hadn't realized at all, but that we discovered and used in the story. Upstairs people would tend to have much smaller buttonholes, and because of that would just have a smaller rose head in their lapel than the servants.”
There was even more conversation, however, about what Hughes would wear for the wedding. While it was decided early on that she would end up borrowing something from Lady Mary or Cora, the actresses’ varying sizes, shapes, and heights meant that it wouldn’t have seemed realistic for Hughes to wear one of the upstairs women’s dresses.
If there was one scene more gratifying than the wedding, though, it may have been the moment in which Hughes stands up to her employers about what she wants on her wedding day—politely but firmly shutting down their own suggestions in favor of her wishes. It was one of the only times in the show’s history that we’ve seen a downstairs character rebuff an upstairs character (while in their domain, no less), and filming the scene was surprisingly just as uncomfortable for the actors as it was the characters.
“It was really interesting filming that, because we were at Highclere in the drawing room, and Molesley was there as the footman serving them, and [actor] Kevin [Doyle, who plays Molesley] was saying how uncomfortable he felt being in the room. He said, ‘It's extraordinary how difficult it is for me to be here while Hughes is being put through her paces like this.’ He kept looking away and wanting to back out but, knowing he couldn't and we were cheering her on. It was quite something.”
Apparently that particular discomfort was not singular to this scene, though.
“One of the things the cast used to say is that whenever they were taken out of their usual setting, like if Mrs. Patmore came upstairs to the library to see Robert or, on this occasion, Mrs. Hughes came up, it would make them feel odd because they weren't in their normal working location. They said they felt slightly nervous and out of place.”
By the time the actors moved on to film the wedding and reception, though, their nerves had dissipated.
“We do have a great time doing those wedding scenes, because all the cast gets to be there, and they're not always together of course,” explained Trubridge. “Between takes, they go off and there's a very lovely area in the house where they just sit and they chat. It's good fun.”
For the final season Downton Abbey got its own float in the Rose Parade, with Elizabeth McGovern headlining the show, accompanied by Laura Kerger, the President of PBS. The work that goes into these floats is tedious and takes days of volunteers literally working around the clock.
