Maggie Smith on the toll of making Downton Abbey's final series

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Dame Maggie Smith said Violet's character 'unfortunately' fits like a glove
The new series starts in 1925 in a period of austerity with redundancies
The Crawley family must learn how to look after themselves and cook
The new series is broadcast on ITV from 9pm on Sunday September 20

Published: 20:00 EST, 10 September 2015 | Updated: 22:10 EST, 10 September 2015

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Life at Downton Abbey has reached the end of an era in more ways than one. TV’s most popular drama is drawing to an end with its sixth and final series. And as far as the storyline goes, for the upstairs aristocrats and downstairs servants, life as they know it can never be the same again.

The year is 1925 and austerity is beginning to be felt. Downton is downsizing, staff are awaiting their redundancy notices, and — horror of horrors — the upper-crust Crawley family must learn for the first time to look after themselves, from getting dressed to preparing their own meals.

Nowhere is the social change more marked than in one scene where the Earl and the Countess slip through the green baize door to the kitchen and make themselves a snack from their new refrigerator — a modern appliance installed against the protests of the cook, Mrs Patmore.

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Dame Maggie Smith, pictured, claims that her character 'Violet' 'unfortunately fits her like a glove'

When the show began in 2010, set in a perpetually sunlit England in the innocent days before World War I, the Crawleys lived in splendour, with vast numbers of staff and an unshakeable belief that they would forever be the highest of high society.

Now, though, with the General Strike looming, the Earl of Grantham has to accept that fading fortunes and the prohibitive cost of maintaining the family’s crumbling home mean that cummerbunds and corsets have to be tightened.

‘Neither you nor I can hold back time,’ he tells butler Carson, who is reeling not just from finding His Lordship and Her Ladyship below stairs, but also from having to make do with just two footmen, instead of six.

And as if that wasn’t enough, what about the modern feminist thinking that has infiltrated the local hunt: Lady Mary’s insistence on no longer riding side-saddle raises shocked eyebrows, as well as male passions.

But not everything is changing at Downton. After all, it wouldn’t be the same without the acid tongue of the Dowager Countess. Feisty as ever, there is no holding back from Violet (Dame Maggie Smith), especially when someone thinks they can get the better of her — as Isobel Crawley (Penelope Wilton), Lady Mary’s widowed mother-in-law, finds out when she dares to disagree with her.

Raising an eyebrow, the Dowager Countess sneers: ‘Does it ever get cold on the moral high ground?’

The final series, featuring Michelle Dockery, left and Laura Carmichael, right, starts on September 20

But double Oscar-winner Dame Maggie, 80, takes no credit for her one-liners, explaining: ‘That’s Downton’s writer, Lord [Julian] Fellowes. He wrote a lot of them for me in Gosford Park and I think he bore that in mind for this.

‘I think that, unfortunately, the character of Violet fits me like a glove — she can be as mean as paint. However, I also think that deep down, where it counts, Violet’s actually very, very nice and has a heart of pure custard.

‘The real me, on the other hand, gets very gritty when I have to be on set early on a cold morning, and sometimes at the end of the day I go home feeling a bit ashamed.

‘I feel like I have lived through most of what’s happened in Downton. I found the World War I episodes in series two really hard to deal with, the most difficult period to go near because I know much suffering went on during the war. My mother would never watch anything to do with it because she lost so much during it.

‘If I had to live in the real Downton days, what I would miss most is the mobile phone. Plus, I prefer to live in times that don’t involve corsets.

‘I’m exhausted now the filming is over, and all I want to do is to lie down and watch the box-sets, as I’ve never seen the show in full.

‘I don’t know how I’ve managed to get through it all. I feel as tired as one of Violet’s wigs.’

In the sixth series, the Crawleys have gone from absolute privilege to a stark reality of modern life

Violet may be as resistant to change as the heavy oak doors of the great house, but the family know the lifestyle they were born into will have to be given up.

‘In six series, the Crawleys have gone from absolute privilege to stark reality’, says Hugh Bonneville, who plays the Earl.

‘All along I’ve been a bit of a dinosaur, resisting change and trying to convince myself that things will soon go back to the way they were. But when I learn that one of my neighbours, who is also landed gentry, is having to sell his estate to pay debts, I realise this could happen to me.

‘I’d like to think that after the Earl and the Countess have gone, Downton would survive with our daughter Mary at the helm. She’d open up the house to tourists — just as Highclere Castle, the setting for Downton, has done. Heaven knows what Carson would have made of that.’

Jim Carter, who plays the family’s long-serving butler, says that seeing the public trudge around the house would probably be the last straw.

He adds: ‘Carson is quite stuck in his ways, but the clock is ticking, the world is changing, and hopefully — with the help of Mrs Hughes, the housekeeper — he will adapt’.

In the final series, newly engaged Carson and Mrs Hughes contemplate marriage.

‘It’s been lumbering over the horizon for many years, that romance, with them crawling together like two old tortoises, moving at the speed of a glacier.’

He also jokes: ‘I’ve been asked if viewers see the aftermath of Carson and Mrs Hughes’s intimacy. What a horrible thought, very vulgar!

‘I’m afraid there is very little I can tell you about their potential nuptials — I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

‘What I can say is that it will tickle your tear ducts, and the Christmas special is going to wreck you, not in a horrible way, nothing cataclysmic, but there’s a feeling of saying goodbye gently to characters you’ve come to love.

‘I’ll miss Downton because I’ve never done a TV show that’s gone on like this and dictated the rhythm of my life for six years.

‘Every February, when filming starts, I’ve put on the butler’s coat and stayed in it until August, when we finish.

‘The recognition has been amazing. I was cycling in Angkor Wat in Cambodia, wearing my Lycra gear, which is probably not an image you’d want to dwell on for very long. A coach stopped and a party of Chinese tourists poured off. They looked at me and one of them said, “Oh, my God, Mr Carson.” That was bizarre.’

The final episodes of the show will finally answer the question of Carson and Mrs Hughes

He recalls filming the last scene, which is candlelit, in the servants’ hall: ‘We cut and I thought I ought to say a few words to the cast and crew; one sentence in and I filled up with emotion. I was gone.

‘Big Lee, a rigger who carries scaffolding around, and the sound guy and the rest of the technical crew were all hugging each other and crying. For a souvenir, I took home the last day’s call sheet, which says when we were due in for our final scenes.’

Phyllis Logan, who plays his potential bride, Mrs Hughes, says: ‘In earlier series it looked as if Mrs Hughes and Mr Carson would get together, but they’ve certainly taken their time. The wick was down to the nub before anything was ignited.’

Having been single for so long, it is dawning on Mrs Hughes that she will be sharing a marital bed with a man, and she is anxious to know what Carson will want once they are married. Will they live like brother and sister? Or will he expect a full husband-and-wife relationship?

‘She’s very worried,’ explains Phyllis. ‘She persuades Mrs Patmore to quiz Mr Carson on her behalf.’

This comes as a shock to proud Carson, who decides that if she is having second thoughts, perhaps they should call off the wedding. He makes it clear that there is no way he just wants friendship.

And on the subject of fraught relationships, Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) once again finds her life running far from smoothly. An indiscretion in the past with her old suitor Lord Gillingham comes back to haunt her and she finds herself facing blackmail threats.

Neither is her contact with her sister, Lady Edith Crawley (Laura Carmichael) any better, and at one stage reaches breaking point as Edith leaves Downton for a new life in London.

Michelle says that Lady Mary’s future is complicated in the final series.

‘With Mary there’s always some kind of struggle,’ she explains. ‘Her past always seems to rear its ugly head. But she’s certainly a little more upbeat in this next series.

‘The relationship between her and her sister is interesting because its very town and country; with Edith in the big city and Mary still at the house.

‘Both of them are slightly envious of one another’s lives, and that brings problems.’

The sisters’ usual peacemaker, Cora, the Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), is moving away from being just the docile wife and mother, showing a far stronger character than ever before.

She even goes in direct conflict with her mother-in-law Violet over plans for their local hospital, despite her husband’s warnings to be wary of challenging his mother, ‘because she always wins’.

Downton Abbey returns to ITV at 9pm on Sunday, September 20.