Elizabeth McGovern talks absence of Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
The 64-year-old actress had been worried that losing her co-star - who died in September 2024 aged 89 - would be a huge loss to Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale but she felt the screen legend's presence "permeated" the entire film and her essence was a part of every scene.
Elizabeth - who plays Cora Crawley - told The Guardian newspaper: 'She's still very much in the atmosphere. I don't feel there's a big hole. In fact, in some ways, it sort of freed up the rest of the narrative to have a flow, because it's not stopping for her moments.
"But everything she represents is there. She's in every room, in every interaction, so it's not like she's not there. It's a weird thing."
Elizabeth admitted playing the American heiress could feel restrictive because of the treatment of women at the time.
Asked if the role could be challenging, she said: 'At times, yes. I think as a contemporary woman, it is hard to feel the straitjacket of that period.'
'I wish at times she could have had more interesting stories, [but it wouldn't have been appropriate for her to have] any more political or social power, because it just wouldn't be accurate to the time'.
Maggie's character, Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, died near the end of the last movie, 2022's Downton Abbey: A New Era, and executive producer Gareth Neame previously admitted the actress' real life passing has added extra emotion to Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.
He told TV Line: "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.
"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...and it feels more genuine and more meaningful."
And another Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale star, Hugh Bonneville, previously admitted it was "poignant" shooting the movie without Maggie.
Speaking on BBC's The One Show, he said: "It was quite poignant making the last film knowing that her character had passed away and then in real life, she passed away after we finished filming.
"So, really, this final film will be a proper tribute to her and to the show, which is coming to an end after 15 years."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
IMDb founder on how a 14-day Alien bender gave birth to an internet monster
Col Needham greets me with a big smile and an outstretched hand and slides me his business card. 'Founder and executive chair of IMDb', it says on one side, and on the other, 'all of life's riddles are answered in the movies'. The line comes from Grand Canyon, the 1991 ensemble drama from Big Chill writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, and is spoken in the film by Steve Martin as a bearded Hollywood producer. 'It's a movie quote about movie quotes,' says Needham, chuckling merrily. Of course it is. Needham is in Australia for the first time, and over the past month he has snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, lived it up in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and soaked up the sites of the Great Ocean Road. But the real reason he's schlepped across the world from his home in Bristol, England, is to serve on the jury of the Melbourne International Film Festival, alongside Aftersun director Charlotte Wells, as chair, and American indie darling Alex Ross Perry, among others. On Saturday, they will reveal the winners of the Bright Horizons Prize for a first- or second-time director – at $140,000, it is one of the richest on the planet – and the Black Magic Design award for an Australian filmmaker, worth $40,000. Judging those prizes requires him to see 13 feature films, but Needham arrived here with a hit list of 91 he intended to catch. 'I've now seen 52 of them,' he says. If he doesn't tick them all off, no problem. 'There's always a carry-forward column.' Loading Columns, lists and movies are the essential ingredients of Needham's life. 'I've been tracking every movie that I've seen since the first of January, 1980,' he tells me. The 58-year-old Mancunian began his working life as a computer engineer at Hewlett-Packard, and owes his career and his fortune to two other pieces of technology: VCRs and the internet. But it all started in his bedroom, as a 14-year-old, with a simple notebook and pen. It was 1981, and his family had just leapt on the latest thing in home technology – a video cassette machine. A 25-minute walk away was a store that sold and rented the machines, and had a small stash of movies on VHS to demonstrate what this marvellous new device could do. And Needham was able to borrow them for two weeks at a time. 'My obsession began, really, with Ridley Scott's Alien,' he says. 'I watched it every single day for the two weeks that we had it – 14 times in 14 days.' He was fascinated by credits, too, reading them to the end long before post-credit sequences became a staple. And he soon started spotting patterns. 'I'm not sure if I understood what a cinematographer was when I was 14, but I knew they were in the opening credits, and then and I'd start to notice that this director often works with this DoP, or this producer is often producing things by this writer.' Loading As his viewing racked up, he began to lose track of what he'd seen. So he started jotting it down in a notebook, which he'd pop in his pocket as he headed off to the video store for his latest batch of three tapes. (As an aside, Needham tells me that by 1982 or 1983, some entrepreneurial character had started doing the rounds of his neighbourhood with a stash of VHS tapes in his car. 'The doorbell would ring, 'Oh, hey, video man'. He'd pop the boot open, and you'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, heard of that one'. It was an entirely different kind of streaming.' ) The first inklings of IMDb would soon emerge, as he transferred his jottings to his home computer. 'It was a Sharp MZ80k,' he recalls. 'It was 48KB [of RAM], and a cassette hard drive.' Needham spent his summer pausing and rewinding videotapes and typing credits into his database. He backdated his entries to January 1, 1980, though he admits some of those entries, which are still on IMDb today, might be a bit sketchy. 'I've been meaning to go back ...' For years it was a solitary pursuit, but in 1985, he discovered online bulletin boards, where members could dial a number, get online, sign up for a mailing list, and message other members. 'You'd probably be mailing, like, 100 fellow movie fans,' he says. 'But that's when I discovered there were other people like me. I was not the only crazy one.' Loading In the early days, it could take a couple of days for someone to respond. But by the late '80s, things were picking up pace. 'You might get a response the same day – shock, horror,' he jokes. He was sharing his database with anyone who was interested, and others shared their own lists: one kept tabs on actresses, but only those still alive; another tracked directors. In September 1990, someone – their name is lost to the mists of time, so no credit there – suggested collating all those separate lists into a single database. 'And so, on October 17, 1990 the first version of IMDb was published onto the public internet,' he says. It was 1993, though, before this hobby pursued by a few film nerds really crossed the Rubicon. Someone at Cardiff University emailed to say he'd downloaded the movie database software and thought it was amazing. 'And he said, 'have you heard of this World Wide Web thing, because I think it might be quite big'.' It was the early days of the internet, so early that a site called What's New on the Web published a daily list of new sites, typically just a couple each day. And Needham was all over it. 'I'd done the web,' he says, laughing. 'I'd been to every website that existed.' Fast forward to late 1997, and Needham received a call from someone at Amazon to say Jeff Bezos would be in England in January and would like to meet. 'We thought we were going to talk about an ad deal,' he says. 'But Jeff had other plans.' On April 24, 1998, IMDb became an Amazon company, and Needham and everyone who'd been working on it swapped their shares in their start-up for cash and shares in Amazon. 'In retrospect, I should have taken all shares,' he says. He's done all right, though. Needham now gets to indulge his nerdy passion as much as he likes, all over the world. He's done jury duty at around 20 festivals, he thinks, including alongside Taika Waititi at Sundance in 2015. 'This is not my first rodeo,' he says of MIFF. His favourite film? Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which he estimates he has seen about 50 times. His most-watched? Not Alien, but its sequel, Aliens, which he has seen 63 times. And the running tally? 'It's 16,446, plus the 13 jury films,' he says. He'll add those to the total once the deliberations are complete. There's always a carry-forward column.
The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
IMDb founder on how a 14-day Alien bender gave birth to an internet monster
Col Needham greets me with a big smile and an outstretched hand and slides me his business card. 'Founder and executive chair of IMDb', it says on one side, and on the other, 'all of life's riddles are answered in the movies'. The line comes from Grand Canyon, the 1991 ensemble drama from Big Chill writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, and is spoken in the film by Steve Martin as a bearded Hollywood producer. 'It's a movie quote about movie quotes,' says Needham, chuckling merrily. Of course it is. Needham is in Australia for the first time, and over the past month he has snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, lived it up in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and soaked up the sites of the Great Ocean Road. But the real reason he's schlepped across the world from his home in Bristol, England, is to serve on the jury of the Melbourne International Film Festival, alongside Aftersun director Charlotte Wells, as chair, and American indie darling Alex Ross Perry, among others. On Saturday, they will reveal the winners of the Bright Horizons Prize for a first- or second-time director – at $140,000, it is one of the richest on the planet – and the Black Magic Design award for an Australian filmmaker, worth $40,000. Judging those prizes requires him to see 13 feature films, but Needham arrived here with a hit list of 91 he intended to catch. 'I've now seen 52 of them,' he says. If he doesn't tick them all off, no problem. 'There's always a carry-forward column.' Loading Columns, lists and movies are the essential ingredients of Needham's life. 'I've been tracking every movie that I've seen since the first of January, 1980,' he tells me. The 58-year-old Mancunian began his working life as a computer engineer at Hewlett-Packard, and owes his career and his fortune to two other pieces of technology: VCRs and the internet. But it all started in his bedroom, as a 14-year-old, with a simple notebook and pen. It was 1981, and his family had just leapt on the latest thing in home technology – a video cassette machine. A 25-minute walk away was a store that sold and rented the machines, and had a small stash of movies on VHS to demonstrate what this marvellous new device could do. And Needham was able to borrow them for two weeks at a time. 'My obsession began, really, with Ridley Scott's Alien,' he says. 'I watched it every single day for the two weeks that we had it – 14 times in 14 days.' He was fascinated by credits, too, reading them to the end long before post-credit sequences became a staple. And he soon started spotting patterns. 'I'm not sure if I understood what a cinematographer was when I was 14, but I knew they were in the opening credits, and then and I'd start to notice that this director often works with this DoP, or this producer is often producing things by this writer.' Loading As his viewing racked up, he began to lose track of what he'd seen. So he started jotting it down in a notebook, which he'd pop in his pocket as he headed off to the video store for his latest batch of three tapes. (As an aside, Needham tells me that by 1982 or 1983, some entrepreneurial character had started doing the rounds of his neighbourhood with a stash of VHS tapes in his car. 'The doorbell would ring, 'Oh, hey, video man'. He'd pop the boot open, and you'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, heard of that one'. It was an entirely different kind of streaming.' ) The first inklings of IMDb would soon emerge, as he transferred his jottings to his home computer. 'It was a Sharp MZ80k,' he recalls. 'It was 48KB [of RAM], and a cassette hard drive.' Needham spent his summer pausing and rewinding videotapes and typing credits into his database. He backdated his entries to January 1, 1980, though he admits some of those entries, which are still on IMDb today, might be a bit sketchy. 'I've been meaning to go back ...' For years it was a solitary pursuit, but in 1985, he discovered online bulletin boards, where members could dial a number, get online, sign up for a mailing list, and message other members. 'You'd probably be mailing, like, 100 fellow movie fans,' he says. 'But that's when I discovered there were other people like me. I was not the only crazy one.' Loading In the early days, it could take a couple of days for someone to respond. But by the late '80s, things were picking up pace. 'You might get a response the same day – shock, horror,' he jokes. He was sharing his database with anyone who was interested, and others shared their own lists: one kept tabs on actresses, but only those still alive; another tracked directors. In September 1990, someone – their name is lost to the mists of time, so no credit there – suggested collating all those separate lists into a single database. 'And so, on October 17, 1990 the first version of IMDb was published onto the public internet,' he says. It was 1993, though, before this hobby pursued by a few film nerds really crossed the Rubicon. Someone at Cardiff University emailed to say he'd downloaded the movie database software and thought it was amazing. 'And he said, 'have you heard of this World Wide Web thing, because I think it might be quite big'.' It was the early days of the internet, so early that a site called What's New on the Web published a daily list of new sites, typically just a couple each day. And Needham was all over it. 'I'd done the web,' he says, laughing. 'I'd been to every website that existed.' Fast forward to late 1997, and Needham received a call from someone at Amazon to say Jeff Bezos would be in England in January and would like to meet. 'We thought we were going to talk about an ad deal,' he says. 'But Jeff had other plans.' On April 24, 1998, IMDb became an Amazon company, and Needham and everyone who'd been working on it swapped their shares in their start-up for cash and shares in Amazon. 'In retrospect, I should have taken all shares,' he says. He's done all right, though. Needham now gets to indulge his nerdy passion as much as he likes, all over the world. He's done jury duty at around 20 festivals, he thinks, including alongside Taika Waititi at Sundance in 2015. 'This is not my first rodeo,' he says of MIFF. His favourite film? Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which he estimates he has seen about 50 times. His most-watched? Not Alien, but its sequel, Aliens, which he has seen 63 times. And the running tally? 'It's 16,446, plus the 13 jury films,' he says. He'll add those to the total once the deliberations are complete. There's always a carry-forward column.
Courier-Mail
4 hours ago
- Courier-Mail
Restored Babinda Quarters listed for $2.2m
A heritage guesthouse that has hosted everyone from scientists and musicians to the occasional NRL legend and Hollywood visitor has been listed for sale after being saved from the scrap heap. Called Babinda Quarters, the Art Deco structure was built in 1953 as accommodation for nurses at Babinda Hospital, and was saved in 2014 by Margaret Perpetua Nelson, fondly known as Maggie. A lifelong enthusiast of heritage buildings, Maggie transformed the almost derelict property into a vibrant guesthouse. After succumbing to a long battle with cancer in 2020, Maggie's daughter, Kim Marsden, embarked on a five-year commitment to rejuvenating the 'grand old dame' in tribute to her late mum. 'I challenged myself to make Babinda Quarters realise its tourism potential and, in so doing, help fund repairs,' Marsden said. 'Our overnight guests were key players in helping save the building, and I am so grateful for bringing life into the building, adding to its warmth and ostensibly providing support.' Now, with the first restoration phase largely complete and a new chapter calling, Babinda Quarters is offered for sale as a freehold property and licensed guesthouse. Just 50 minutes south of Cairns and moments from the Wooroonooran National Park, the triple-brick Art Deco building sits on an elevated 2924sq m block. It features 20 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a manager's quarters, and a newly built rear deck—all framed by heritage terrazzo, timber and glass detailing. 'Guests are increasingly seeking authentic places with colour and history,' Marsden said. 'This is not a cookie-cutter motel—it's part boutique guesthouse, part artist retreat, part old school adventure.' Inside, Babinda Quarters is bursting with colour, and its own special blend of charming quirk and character. MORE NEWS: Why you may have to wait to benefit from the interest rate cut Council bin-shames resident in cold slab twist Brisbane's 5 new blue-chip suburbs revealed A music lounge, crowned by a vintage Bernstein Baby Grand piano, sits at the heart of the building, surrounded by an eclectic mix of instruments, from guitars to ukuleles. Each guest room and shared space is adorned with handpicked works by local artists, including Ed Koumans, Julie Poulson, Ricky Beresford and Karen Charlebois. Outside, tropical gardens encircle the guesthouse. The building's flexible layout offers ample opportunity for new owners to expand or reimagine its potential—as a wellness retreat, creative hub, eco-lodge, or continued guesthouse. One possibility, Marsden suggests, is reconfiguring the upper front floor into a private residence while continuing to operate the eight guest rooms. She added that while many shared spaces have been restored, the large communal kitchen downstairs—still reminiscent of 1980s laminate—remains a blank canvas. The property is now listed for $2.2 million with Professionals Edge Hill agent Diane Bray.
