Maggie Smith, winner of Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.
Maggie Smith may have joked that her Downton Abbey character “must be 110 by now,” but a younger version of the acid-tongued Dowager Countess soon could appear on TV screens.
In an interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes hinted that the character could appear in The Gilded Age, the NBC drama set in late-19th century New York that he’ll be working on once Downton comes to an end after its sixth season.
“Robert [Crawley] would be in his early teens, Cora would be a child. A young Violet could make an appearance,” he said.
Related Stories
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter following the announcement that his hit show would be ending, Fellowes said he was relishing the prospect of starting on the new series.
“There’s always an assumption that it’s impossible to make lightning strike twice in the same place. But I’m looking forward to it, and I think it’ll be quite different,” he said.
But although he admits to having started thinking about The Gilded Age, a fictional series set within the real-life industrial boom of America and the upper echelons of New York’s high society, he added that he wouldn’t start writing until he was finished with the Crawleys.
Said Fellowes: “I do want to be off with the old love before I’m on with the new.”
