Exclusive Interview: Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes

PREMIUM: Julian Fellowes, the creator and writer of Downton Abbey, talks to World Screen about using history to tell stories and the challenges of shooting a period piece.

WS: You have written all the episodes on your own. How have you managed that?
FELLOWES: The writers’ room tradition is much more known in America. The soap operas here in the U.K. have writing rooms and so do certain series. But the single writer writing the whole series is much more ordinary here. That's why we're limited. We do two 90-minute episodes or eight episodes of a series and then a 2-hour special so it adds up to 10 hours of television. That’s about as much as one person can do. In America when they go to 22 episodes, they have to have a writers’ room.

WS: And even then they struggle to get to 22!
FELLOWES: It's an interesting concept. I don’t feel at all resistant to it. There is a plan for me to write a series for American television when Downton is finally done. We will probably start with 10 or 12 episodes; if it stays on the air and does go to 22, I would have to run a writers’ room and I find that quite an intriguing prospect.

WS: Historical events are an important backbone of the series. How do you use history to tell your stories?
FELLOWES: I like events that don't just affect one class, but all classes, because they serve as rather a good reminder that in the last analysis we are all in this together. That's what's very helpful about a war or an epidemic or a financial crash, because they touch everyone. Nobody is safe; nobody is protected from them. I feel that Downton's subtext, if you like, is essentially what unites us. What we all have in common is really more important than the things that separate us. Those events can help bring that out.

WS: We all have problems regardless of our social class. That reminds me of a line of the Dowager Countess: "We all have problems, we work through them, we get them settled, and then there is another set of problems, and another set of problems, until we die!”
FELLOWES: Isn't that true, really? It's what one's life is. It's dealing with stuff and it doesn't matter if you are the queen of France or working in a factory in Madrid. You just have to get on with it.

WS: Regardless of whether you are upstairs or downstairs, it's one's character that determines how one deals with problems.
FELLOWES: I completely agree. One thing that I always try to do, and it's a theme of the show, is that we have as much respect for Daisy [a maid] dealing with her issues as we do for Edith [the Earl’s daughter] dealing with hers. We're all dealt a set of cards in this life. Some hands are rather better than others admittedly, but in the end we have to play them as best we can. I don't mean people who are really at the bottom and are having an absolutely ghastly time all the time; I exclude them from this. But from the working class and the middle class and the upper class we have examples of people who have made a success of things and people who have made a great mess of things—you can find them up and down the social ladder.

WS: Aside from examining the difference in classes, are there other themes that you wanted to explore when you started the series?
FELLOWES: We knew the show would be about change. By starting it in 1912, it began in the shadow of the Great War and then we had the second series in the war and then we had the 1920s. All three of those eras were very distinct. It was really during the ’20s that the 19th century left and the 20th century arrived. By the time you get to the 1930s with talkies and airplanes, you are in essence in the modern world. I know they didn't have computers, but nevertheless their thinking is essentially modern. In 1910 their thinking was essentially Victorian, they were still living in the 19th century by 19th century values. That bridge was really crossed by a combination of the war and the aftereffects of the war. It was in the ’20s that people realized that things really had changed. At the beginning of the decade, they weren't quite sure how much had changed. Was it all going to go back to the way it had been? A lot of the servants came back and life in a way went on as it had been before. But gradually, as the decade wore on, it became clearer and clearer that women didn't want the same kind of life. Servants didn't want the same kind of life. The working classes wanted to be organized in their labor, the unions got stronger. Transport changed completely. Telecommunications changed completely. Entertainment changed completely. That was all in quite a few short years. There have been other decades like that—the ’60s is an obvious one—where within 10 or 12 years, the world really seems to change. The ’20s is one of those times and it has always interested me. Everyone has always done things about the ’30s and the Nazis and the Second World War looming up, but the ’20s have been much less covered in drama and it seemed to me to be an opportunity.

WS: I’ve read that the concept of the adolescence, teens being treated as teens, emerged in the ’20s.
FELLOWES: It’s also when music started being created for the young. [Prior to that, music] was created for people with money to spend who went to night clubs or went out dining, mainly people in their 30s and 40s. That changed in the ’20s—suddenly it was the young that were leading the field. That was a great change. Look at the fashions, it was the first time that the androgynous teenager was celebrated by the fashion houses and women’s bosoms were bound to create that sort of adolescent look, which was the exact opposite of the Edwardians who were all sort of Gibson Girls with their bosoms and bottoms padded and sticking out here there and everywhere to create a completely feminine curvy form. That was the opposite of the ’20s. The ’20s created a total reversal.

WS: What are the challenges of shooting a period piece, especially when you are off the set and shooting on location?
FELLOWES: We pick restaurants like the Criterion and Rules that were already open in the ’20s and haven't really changed. We like to use real places. I always like using real restaurants, real libraries, real this, real that, if we can. I think it adds something. The public understands that these are places that existed then and exist now and if they want [they can go to], which I think is a fun element in the show. Of course, [shooting on location] at times can be difficult with noises [from the street] and so on but the public now are very film-aware. It's been a long time since people started filming on the streets in New York or London and almost everyone knows what a film set is. People may stop and watch and they may be curious but they're not usually disruptive because they understand what is happening. In Bampton, [where many exteriors for Downton Abbey are shot] we've been very lucky. It's quite funny because we use Bampton as if it's a largish village. In fact, the bit we use is only one part of quite a big town. It's one little section; it's not the center of town by any means. But where we're incredibly lucky is that the residents have remained so supportive of the show. Often when you film somewhere everyone is very interested and they come out and they want to be an extra and they want to be in the wedding scene or whatever. But when you've come back for the 11th time, they can’t park outside their house, they can't drive down that road, they've just about had enough and I don’t blame them. And where the Bampton residents have been extremely unusual, if not unique, is that they never lost their enthusiasm or their supportiveness. And that is a lovely thing.

WS: Perhaps they are quite proud to have the show shot there.
FELLOWES: I think they mostly enjoy the show. When Mary was getting married we were terribly keen that the paparazzi didn't steal a shot of her dress. The locals kept saying, There's one up there! There’s one out there! There's a guy who has been sneaking around all morning, he's over there! They helped us and we stopped it and there wasn’t a picture of the dress before the show went out. I love them for that!

WS: Once you have written the scripts, how do you work with the other executive producers on the show?
FELLOWES: Downton is a very tight team. Gareth Neame, Elizabeth Trubridge and I make the show. We work very, very, closely together. For the major casting, even the minor casting, we weigh in.

I finish a script and my wife, Emma, reads it. I do her notes. Then Gareth and Liz read it and they have big notes and I do one big note session. Then they have little notes, you know, he’s using a glass, wouldn’t it be better if he had a cup? Then I do those. Only then does it go to ITV. And then if they have useful things to say we do them, but basically by the time Emma and the three of us have finished with the scripts, it’s getting very near to what will be shot. Quite honestly there are many overlaps because I am doing the third draft of episode two while I am writing episode three or four. And then later on in the series, I’m doing notes on the edit of episode one while I am still trying to finish the script of episode six.

But the three of us, Gareth, Liz and I, are a very tight team and I know [working] in America will be about 70,000 people who feel they have the right to get involved in the creative process! There must be a way through it because I think American television is producing some of the best stuff there is at the moment. Mad Men, The Good Wife and Scandal, these are all fabulous shows that I have been obsessed with. I don’t say that critically, I just know that there must be a different technique for dealing with it and it’s a technique I have to acquire.

WS: I’ve heard that the more successful the showrunner, the fewer notes they receive.
FELLOWES: The difficulty is not so much the number of notes, though of course it is! The real problem, and it’s true if you are writing a movie or a musical, is it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you want to be sure that everyone involved is trying to make the same show. And sometimes you are gradually made aware that this producer or that producer or this star is actually trying to make a different show. And they continue giving you notes until you turn it into a different show. That’s when shows fall apart. That’s certainly when movies fall apart.

WS: There needs to be one singular vision and everyone needs to buy into that.
FELLOWES: Everyone has to buy into it—that’s the achievement. So often, you can tell right at the beginning of the process whether you’ve got that or whether you’ve got people pulling in opposite directions.

WS: Ouch! Then what do you do?
FELLOWES: Run!

WS: The Gilded Age is the show you’ll be doing in the U.S.?
FELLOWES: The Gilded Age is the show I’m going to do for NBCUniversal, but they have been very kind and they have allowed me not to have a start date. [I will start The Gilded Age] when Downton finishes. I can do Downton and other things, I’m working on a musical of Wind in the Willows, but I couldn’t do two series at the same time. I’d be found dead with my feet sticking out of a bush!