Paul Giamatti lately opened up in regards to the manufacturing of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale within the wake of Maggie Smith‘s dying, reflecting on how the movie carries her spirit and serves to honor her.
Talking to Folks forward of his forthcoming Black Mirror episode this week, the two-time Oscar nominee opened up about reprising his position from the wildly standard mothership present, during which he appeared through the Season 4 Christmas particular as Cora’s (Elizabeth McGovern) brother Harold Levinson.
“It was not the identical with out her, but it surely felt very very like in her honor indirectly. She definitely nonetheless feels current by the entire thing. Not having her there may be clearly an enormous loss, however all people was nonetheless appearing in her spirit,” The Holdovers star stated.
He added, “Working together with her the primary time round was the most effective issues ever and I didn’t even actually get to try this a lot together with her.”
Giamatti’s casting in Downton Abbey 3 is a bit shocking, even to the actor himself. Given his unique one-episode arc, the actor was initially greatly surprised at being approached to reenter the world of the British interval drama.
“The fascinating factor for me was that they even requested me in any respect as a result of I used to be like, ‘I don’t have an necessary character on this story.’ However what’s humorous is my character has a really important position. He does one thing very important within the film,” he teased.
Becoming a member of Giamatti are new additions Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon Russell Beale and Arty Froushan, in addition to forged mainstays McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Robert James-Collier, Joanne Froggatt, Allen Leech, Penelope Wilton, Lesley Nicol, Michael Fox, Raquel Cassidy, Brendan Coyle, Kevin Doyle, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sophie McShera and Douglas Reith.
Giamatti’s phrases echo sentiments shared by government producer Gareth Neame final yr, who stated that the film will function a “significant” tribute to the late Smith, who died in late September 2024.
“The truth that Dame Maggie herself has now handed away since that point, I do suppose, has given an actual added poignancy to a narrative that we’d have deliberate anyway,” he acknowledged on the time. “The lack of the Dowager, it now feels way more important that you simply see actors taking part in characters mourning the household matriarch. However I additionally see actors mourning the matriarch of the present, and it feels extra real and extra significant.” (Smith’s character — Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, for which she obtained three Emmy Awards — died in 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Period.)
Downton Abbey 3 is about for theatrical launch Sept. 12.
