LONDON, Aug. 14 (UPI) — Maggie Smith and her Downton Abbey co-stars discussed the show’s end at a press event Thursday.
The 80-year-old English actress and several cast members, including Joanne Froggatt and Hugh Bonneville, gathered at the Mayfair Hotel in London. Smith and her co-stars finished filming the drama’s sixth and final season this week.
“I’m going to be lying down,” the star joked of her future plans. “I believe for quite some time. The other thing I will be doing is watching it. I will get the box set and have a good look. I certainly haven’t watched anything that I’ve done. I have seen some of it, but I want to sit down and look at it all.”
“I just had my own tears, but it developed into everybody in tears by the end of the day,” Froggatt said of the final day. “But it was a wonderful final day, actually, it was all the things you would hope it would be. It was happy, sad, it felt like a good time to finish this and we were all doing it together.”
Smith and Froggatt portray dowager countess Violet Crawley and lady’s maid Anna Smith on the ITV series. Bonneville stars as patriarch Robert Crawley, with Elizabeth McGovern as Robert’s wife Cora and Laura Carmichael and Michelle Dockery as his daughters Edith and Mary.
Downton Abbey airs on PBS in the U.S., and will return Jan. 3, 2016. Executive producer Gareth Neame previously assured fans the “ultimately happy” show will not end on a devastating note, and said he and series creator Julian Fellowes will consider a movie and/or spinoff.
