Late Dame Maggie Smith goes to be “mourned” within the third Downton Abbey.
The third movie will function a poignant tribute to each the long-lasting Dowager Countess and the beloved actress who introduced her to life, Maggie Smith.
Following Smith’s passing on September 27 on the age of 89, the upcoming Downton Abbey film will embody a “significant” tribute, govt producer Gareth Neame advised TVLine in an interview printed Tuesday, December 24.
“We won’t ever see the like of Dame Maggie Smith ever once more,” Neame mentioned, calling the lack of the two-time Oscar winner “the tip of an period.”
Smith portrayed Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, because the ITV and PBS drama’s debut in 2010.
She continued the function within the 2019 movie adaptation and its 2022 sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era, even after the sequence concluded in 2015.
In A New Era, the Dowager Countess dies inside the story.
Neame, 57, famous the added significance of this storyline in mild of Smith’s real-life passing.
“The undeniable fact 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 mentioned of the third movie, scheduled for a September 12, 2025, theatrical launch.
“The lack of the Dowager,” added the “Day of the Jackal” producer, “now feels way more vital that you simply see actors taking part in characters mourning the household matriarch.
But I additionally see actors mourning the matriarch of the present, and it feels extra real and extra significant.”
Neame promised that the “enormous respect” the Downton Abbey forged and crew have for Smith “will come throughout within the subsequent film.”
Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes known as working with Smith “the best privilege of my profession,” telling People, “we had been greater than lucky to be a part of the final act in her stellar profession.”
Smith, whose ultimate display screen credit score was the 2023 movie The Miracle Club, is survived by her sons and 5 grandchildren.
