Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes has revealed he brought the period drama to an end after 15 years in order to avoid setting the story during World War II.
The 76-year-old writer said he “didn’t really want to get into the Nazis and Germany” and instead “wanted to leave at a time when that had not yet become apparent as a threat.”
“The actors and everyone else had come to the end of this job, and it was time to set them free,” Fellowes told Entertainment Weekly of his decision to conclude the story of the Crawley family.
Fellowes’s remarks arrive on the release of the franchise’s third film: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which is set in the 1930s.
The conclusion will follow the 7th Earl of Grantham, Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), as he plans to pass down his estate to his daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery).
However, news of Mary’s divorce from Matthew Goode’s Henry Talbot puts her impending stewardship in jeopardy as the family’s financial troubles could see them sell and leave the abbey for good.
The series, which ran for six seasons from 2010 to 2015, concluded in 1925, with the first of the franchise’s films, Downton Abbey: The Motion Picture, taking place two years later in 1927.
Elsewhere in the interview, Fellowes said he considers 1930 as the start of the “modern age”, which he considers very different from the world Downton existed in.
In her three-star review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey said Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is “proof that this franchise simply must end”.
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She wrote: “There’s no escaping the fact that this film, once again, feels like two episodes of the TV series have been smashed together.”
Earlier this month, Fellowes declared he’d made the final film for the fans, not the critics and didn’t expect the movie to be reviewed well.
“I don’t need to read a review anymore – I could tell you what it says beforehand,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to attract new viewers any more and I was aware we were saying goodbye.”
