Dame Maggie Smith says that she will leave Downton Abbey and her role as the Dowager Countess, after the show’s sixth season.
Dame Maggie, 80, has strong feelings about her character, and amidst rumours that the epic costume drama may finally be drawing to a close, has voiced her feelings that the Dowager Countess has done her dash on the show.
“They say this is the last one, and I can’t see how it could go on,” Dame Maggie said in a new interview with The Times of London.
“I mean, I certainly can’t keep going. To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We’re into the late 1920s.”
Dame Maggie, who won over George Clooney on set when he dropped by for a guest spot, has so far played Lady Violet Crawley for five seasons – with the fifth season currently airing in Australia on Channel Seven and season six to begin filming soon.
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With the character of her Ladyship reportedly born in 1842, doing the math, that would put her at 82 years old by the Season 5 finale, set on Christmas Eve 1924.
Maggie also elaborated on how the show has shot her to international superstardom in her later years. In spite of a long and illustrious acting career, the immense popularity of the show has shot her to a level of mega-fame that she is no longer comfortable with.
“One isn’t safe after doing Downton,” she said. “What’s sad is I’ve gone through my whole life without any of that. I could go round galleries and things on my own and I just can’t do it now.”
Dame Maggie as the Dowager Countess, Lady Crawley.
In spite of her apparent eagerness to put the character to rest though, Dame Maggie says that ultimately the decision is out of her hands.
“It’s not really my decision,” she said. “I don’t own Downton Abbey now. NBC Universal owns Downton Abbey. So I could walk away, but I wouldn’t walk away. It’s too much my baby. It won’t go on forever — I’m not a believer in that. But I can’t immediately now tell you where the end will be.”
In January, a source on the show revealed that Downton would soon be coming to an end, telling the UK’s Mirror that: “It’s an open secret that Downton is ending this year.”
The source continued “Some of the actors are keen to let it be known they will be available for work after the summer. Some are interested in the US, where Downton is as popular as it is in the UK.”
An ITV spokesperson refuted the rumours though, saying: “We wouldn’t comment on speculative stories about our programmes.”
Dame Maggie says that even if the show does wind up though, she has no plans to retire from acting anytime soon!
