The film’s executive producer said Smith’s death gave an “added poignancy to a story that we would have planned anyway”
Dame Maggie Smith and her celebrated Downton Abbey character Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, will receive a “meaningful” tribute in the franchise’s third movie, set to arrive next year.
Speaking recently with TVLine, Downton Abbey executive producer Gareth Neame revealed that the new movie was already set to contain a tribute to Violet, who (spoiler alert) died at the end of 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era. Smith, herself, died this past September, and Neame said that while the in-movie tribute was being filmed, he could feel it extending to both character and actress.
“The fact that Dame Maggie herself has now passed away since that time, I do think, has given a real added poignancy to a story that we would have planned anyway,” Neame said. “The loss of the Dowager, it now feels far more significant that you see actors playing characters mourning the family matriarch. But I also see actors mourning the matriarch of the show, and it feels more genuine and more meaningful.”
Naeme went on to say that he believed the whole Downton Abbey team’s “huge respect for [Smith]… will come across in the next movie.” The producer also called her death “the end of an era” and said, “We will never see the like of Dame Maggie Smith ever again.”
Downtown Abbey 3 (which doesn’t have an official title yet) is set to arrive in theaters next September. The film will feature much of the original core cast, including Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern, returning as Robert and Cora Crawley, the heads of the Grantham estate. It will also boast the return of Paul Giamatti, who will reprise his role as Cora’s brother, the wealthy American playboy Harold Levinson, who first appeared in the 2013 Downton Abbey Christmas special.
