Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary and Dan Stevens as Matthew Crawley starred in "Downton Abbey? which finished its third season Sunday on PBS. GILES KEYTE/Carnival Film & Television Limited 2012 for Masterpiece
Season three of “Downton Abbey” was filled with twists and turns, not all within the control of Julian Fellowes, creator and writer of the hit PBS period drama.
SPOILER ALERT: The following information has been widely publicized on the Internet since the episode aired Christmas night in England, and anyone who saw the season finale last Sunday is aware of the outcome.
The deaths of two main characters in this past season were beyond his control, Fellowes told the New York Times on Monday.
Series actors in England sign contacts for up to three years instead of the usual five- to seven-year contracts used in the United States. So when actors want out, the show’s producers have no choice but to let them go, he said.
“… And Jessica (Brown Findlay) and Dan (Stevens) wanted to go,” said Fellowes, who is an Oscar-winning screenwriter. “The show had been very, very successful, tremendously so, and they were being offered great opportunities. Don’t think I’m saying it critically — I don’t blame them at all.”
Stevens’ character, Matthew Crawley, died in the final 30 seconds of the season finale episode. Findlay’s character, Sybil Branson, died earlier in the season due to complications of childbirth.
Fellowes told the publication that writing the deaths of the main characters in a drama about the upper class of England is the only way to get rid of them.
“When an actor playing a servant wants to leave, there isn’t really a problem — (that character gets) another job,” he said in the article posted on artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com Monday. “With members of the family, once they’re not prepared to come back for any episodes at all, then it means death.”
There was also no way fans of the series would accept any other type of estrangement between Matthew Crawley and his wife, Lady Mary Crawley, and their baby, Fellowes said.
Stevens has gone on to a starring role in Broadway’s “The Heiress,” opposite Jessica Chastain of “Zero Dark Thirty,” and he is working on a film about WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, according to examiner.com. He is also reportedly up for a role in a Liam Neeson film.
Findlay has three films in various stages of production. One of those, “Lullaby,” also stars Amy Adams, Terrence Howard, Jennifer Hudson and Anne Archer.
The fourth season of “Downton,” being filmed now in England, is set six months after the events that unfolded in Sunday’s season finale, Fellowes explained.
“I’m not giving anything away by saying that one of the main themes is the rebuilding of Mary, that Mary has to rebuild her life in a society which is changing,” he said. “We would see women’s roles in the ’20s as being very much behind women today. But it was a big advance on what it had been 30 years before. And that’s all explored in the show.”
The fourth season debuts in England in September in the U.S. in January 2014.
After season four of “Downton,” Fellowes said he may have to hand off some off his writing duties because he has signed with NBC to write a new series tentatively titled “The Gilded Age.”
According to NBC, it will be an “epic tale of the princes of the American Renaissance, and the vast fortunes they made — and spent — in late 19th-century New York.”
For more on the story, go to
tulsaworld.com/moredownton.
In case you haven't seen it. Here's an extended preview of "Downton's" season finale.
Watch Downton Abbey Season 3, Episode 7 on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.
