INTERVIEW: Director Simon Curtis on the secrets of ‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’
Photo: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale stars, from left, Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael. Photo courtesy of Focus Features / Provided by press kit with permission.
The years-long saga of Downton Abbey has come to an end with the recent release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which is now available digitally. The show, created and written by Julian Fellowes, began life on TV and then transitioned into the film world, with The Grand Finale serving as the third and final story of the Crawleys and the many people who work at Downton Abbey.
Simon Curtis, a director of TV, film and theater, was the maestro behind The Grand Finale and the second film in the series, Downton Abbey: A New Era. He said the experience of working on this final installment was a meaningful one.
“Very much so,” Curtis said in a recent Zoom interview. “Also with the added poignancy that for once this really was the end. There have been lots of goodbyes over the history of this show, but this really was the goodbye. So it gave everything an added emotion.”
Curtis talked about the uniqueness of directing a project with established characters, established storylines, an established set and an established audience. Fans have flocked to Downton Abbey to learn about the upstairs family members who live a life of decadence in the early parts of the 20th century and the downstairs workers who toil away to keep everything clean and punctual.
“It’s never just another movie because you’re inheriting this family, this ensemble that has changed everyone’s lives that worked on it, so the end of it was a big deal,” he said. “But what was interesting was at the very end, the actors were saying goodbye, and the audience was saying goodbye to those characters. But the characters weren’t necessarily saying goodbye to each other, so we had to be very disciplined about how much emotion we portrayed.”
For Curtis, he relied on the longevity of the series when it came to his directing choices. He said he’d be a fool not to lean on that experience amongst the cast members, some of whom have been portraying their individual roles for 15 years.
“The biggest challenge was getting everyone to the starting gate at the same time because they’re all over the world doing all kinds of things, so I’m glad I didn’t have to do the schedule,” Curtis said. “It’s a love letter to family actually, and I don’t just mean the Crawleys. I mean all the characters upstairs and downstairs. The audience and the characters have all aged 15 or 20 years … so it has great meaning for people. And I think people are nostalgic for 2010-2011 when we used to watch TV as a family in real time without phones, and I think we’re nostalgic for that, particularly given how turbulent the last 5-10 years have been.”
Shooting a Downton Abbey film is a lot tougher than lensing a story that is more modern. There are so many costumes to consider and historical advisers who are brought into the conversation. “Everyone’s got an opinion,” the director said. “But the detail is one of the things that appealed to people over the years.”
As Curtis himself says goodbye to Downton Abbey, he holds his interactions with the cast members, such as Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville and Laura Carmichael, as the strongest memories of his time in this world. “They’re a fantastic group of actors whose lives have all changed by this job,” he said, “and it was very, very rewarding.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, directed by Simon Curtis, is now available on digital platforms. Click here for more information.
