When Michelle Dockery first learned that Dan Stevens had opted out of the fourth season of PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” she panicked. Were the walls at Highclere Castle about to crumble? “Initially, I was very concerned,” says Dockery. “I thought, this is the storyline that everyone’s invested in.”
From the beginning, this luscious, captivating British series was always about the beautiful and hopelessly spoiled Lady Mary (Dockery) and Matthew Crawley (Stevens), the middle-class cousin who stands to inherit the title, the estate, and in the end, her love. The fairytale of Matthew and Mary was the romantic tent-pole that held up the franchise and kept fans enthralled. So if Matthew left the castle, what was left?
“I knew it was gonna be hard,” says Laura Carmichael, who plays Lady Edith. “I thought, people are gonna be so mad.”
When we last saw Matthew at the end of Season 3, he was lying in a ditch, crushed by his overturned roadster. He was on his way home to announce the birth of his and Mary’s son, George, heir to Downton.
“It was shocking, wasn’t it?” says Sophie McShera, who plays the kitchen maid and now assistant cook, Daisy. “But it’s brilliant in what it’s opened up, the tragedy for Lady Mary. That’s so interesting to watch.”
“What were they going to be, Mr. And Mrs. Dull, living happily ever after?” asks Phyllis Logan, who plays the head housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes. “It was a good opportunity to throw something different into the mix.”
So the internal mourning for their departed colleague Stevens — who went on to do a play on Broadway and a movie — couldn’t, and didn’t, last long. Now that Mary has produced an heir, what creator Julian Fellowes was left with was a newly widowed, ridiculously wealthy woman who has to choose how to go on with her life. In Season 4, we join the family six months after Matthew’s passing — the year is 1922 — and find that once again, the world around the castle is changing, challenging its residents to change their upper-crust ways.
For one thing, the Roaring ’20s brings a sea change in women’s rights, and the new freedom of movement leads to changes in attitude and behavior.
“I don’t have to wear a corset towards the end of Season 4,” says Joanne Froggatt, who plays lady’s maid Anna. “The shape of things is changing. Now I have to wear something [on my chest] to flatten everything out, not that there’s much to flatten. But it’s very nice to be out of that corset.”
The two characters who take the most advantage of social change are Lady Edith and Lady Rose (played by Lily James), the teenage relative who has come to stay. An unrepentant flapper, Lady Rose finds herself attracted to the unthinkable: A black jazz musician, Jack Ross, played by Gary Carr.
And Lady Edith? After the humiliation of getting left at the altar, she’s ready to throw caution to the wind, exploring an illicit relationship with her married London editor.
“With the editor, she’s older and wiser,” says Carmichael. “It feels like a very modern relationship, and certainly not one that her family would approve of. It sort of feels like she’s been released. She’s gone to London. She’s gone rogue.”
Lady Edith has had enough heartbreak for three lifetimes, and, according to Carmichael, the idea of living with her parents into their golden years is unacceptable. “It affects your whole world, whether you’re going to live the rest of your life as a spinster,” she says. “Sybil (the younger sister who also died in the third season) and Matthew would’ve supported her. Sybil was the rebel, and Matthew helped Lady Edith find her voice.”
Froggatt and McShera say they were startled by Lady Edith’s Season 4 on-screen transformation. “Sophie and I were at the screening and it was quite shocking,” says Froggatt, because of what she was wearing. “Her shoulders were out and we watched it going, ‘It looks very risque.’”
Meanwhile, the hard-working downstairs staff will be going through their own upheavals. The conniving Miss O’Brien, played by Siobhan Finneran, has moved on. Mr. Molesley (Bernard Gallagher), Matthew’s valet, suddenly finds himself out of a job. And Daisy finds herself over-stepping her authority with the head cook, Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), while at the same time trying to get the footman, Alfred (Matt Milne), to finally pay attention to her.
“She’s relentless,” says McShera. “Mostly, she’s trying to find some contentment in her personal life, which is pretty impossible. It’s not like you can go to a singles’ night. It’s so lonely. Mrs. Patmore must be really lonely.”
And then there’s the unspoken love between the head butler, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs. Hughes. “I say it’s the greatest love story of ‘Downton,’” says McShera. “I just want them to get together!”
But Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, models of Victorian propriety, will not be falling into each other’s arms anytime soon. Will they even share a kiss? “Absolutely not!” says Logan. “We love our scenes together, in his pantry or my sitting room. They can be at one with each other. But there will be no kissing!”
But none of that romantic drama holds a candle to the darkest, most disturbing story-line to date. Fans across the pond, who have already seen the fourth series, were dismayed to watch one of the downstairs staff become the victim of a brutal assault. When the actors came to America to do publicity, no one in the cast was allowed to discuss it. “On pain of death,” says Froggatt, only half-kidding.
Still, these characters are made of strong stuff. Anna’s relationship with Mr. Bates is second only to Matthew and Mary as “Downton”’s great romance.
“It was quite surprising that people took Anna and Bates into their hearts,” says Froggatt. “We always knew that there was going to be this very slow-burn relationship. And that it stemmed from this real faith and trust in each other that is unmovable, unshakable.”
And as for Lady Mary? She’ll be faced with a string of good-looking prospects, some of them golddiggers, lusting after the carpets and silver and that Van Dyck oil painting in the drawing room as much as the lady. What was the biggest challenge for Dockery’s character? “Recovering, really, and being without Matthew, and starting a new life,” she says. “She’s not quite ready to move on. And I think that’s right. I don’t think the audience would like to see Mary suddenly with someone else. Everyone loved Matthew. And of course, we still don’t know where it’s going from month to month. So it’s always really exciting, reading the next script.”