Shirley MacLaine attends the "AFI Life Achievement Award Honoring Shirley MacLaine" which aired Sunday on TVLand. CHRIS PIZZELLO/Invision/AP
It’s finally arrived. That long-awaited moment when Dame Maggie Smith's Countess of Grantham meets Shirley MacLaine as the American mother of Lady Grantham on the new season of "Downton Abbey."
The footage was revealed during the American Film Institute’s tribute to Oscar winner MacLaine Sunday on TVLand.
In the scene, Martha Levinson, mother of Lady Cora Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) arrives at the Abbey and is greeted by the Countess.
"Oh dear, I'm afraid the war has made old women of us both," Martha says to the Countess.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," she responds. "But I always keep out of the sun."
Asked how she found Downton on her return, Martha replied: "Much the same really. Probably too much the same, but then, I don’t want to cast a pall over all the happiness."
In a tvguide.com interview MacLaine said she had to "sort of makeup" the personality of the character she plays in the first two episodes of the new season.
"She is from Long Island and finally lands at Downton Abbey and sees what's happening to the place when everyone's coming back from the war," said the actress. What makes her character interesting, is "her reactions to tradition and the class system,” she added.
"I do my best to be kind to tradition but frankly think it should shift."
The third season of the highly popular PBS drama series about life above and below the stairs on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, England, returns to the U.S. in January 2013.
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