Downton Abbey Script Book Season 1

Home > Other > Downton Abbey Script Book Season 1 > Page 33
Downton Abbey Script Book Season 1 Page 33

by Julian Fellowes

David Marsh

  Editors

  John Wilson A.C.E

  Nick McPhee

  Alex Mackie A.C.E

  Costume Designer

  Susannah Buxton

  Make-Up & Hair Designer

  Anne ‘Nosh’ Oldham

  Casting Director

  Jill Trevellick CDG

  Music

  John Lunn

  Writer (Episode 4)

  Shelagh Stephenson

  Writer (Episode 6)

  Tina Pepler

  First Assistant Directors

  Phil Booth

  George Walker

  Howard Arundel

  Second Assistant Director

  Charlie Reed

  Third Assistant Directors

  Dannielle Bennett

  Gayle Dickie

  Script Supervisors

  Sarah Garner

  Heather Storr

  Location Manager

  Richard May

  Assistant Location Manager

  Mark ‘Sparky’ Ellis

  Unit Manager

  John Prendergast

  Production Manager

  Sarah Dibsdall

  Production Accountant

  Sarah Lucraft

  Production Co-Ordinator

  Bettina Lyster

  Assistant Production

  Co-Ordinator

  Jonathan Houston

  Assistant Accountant

  Davina Pem

  Camera Operators

  Xandy Sahla

  Paddy Blake

  Focus Puller

  Anna Benbow

  Clapper Loader

  Gabriel Hyman

  Grips

  Simon Fogg

  Rupert Morency

  Gaffer

  Otto Stenov

  Best Boy

  Aaron Walters

  Supervising Art Director

  Charmian Adams

  Art Director

  Mark Kebby

  Production Buyer

  Fiona Haddon

  Set Decorator

  Gina Cromwell

  Standby Art Director

  Pippa Broadhurst

  Assistant Art Director

  Lucy Spofforth

  Sound Mixers

  Mark Holding

  John Rodda

  Peter Eusebe

  Prop Master

  Mike Power

  Dressing Props

  Tom Pleydell Pearce

  Charlie Johnson

  Standby Props

  Damian Butlin

  Andy Forrest

  Special Effects

  Jason Troughton

  Stunt Co-ordinator

  Andy Bradford

  Assistant Costume Designer

  Caroline McCall

  Costume Supervisor

  Dulcie Scott

  Costume Assistants

  Jason Gill

  Vicky Salway

  Hanne Cauwenbergh

  Make-Up & Hair Supervisor

  Christine Greenwood

  Make-Up & Hair Artists

  Elaine Browne

  Sally Collins

  Gerda Lauciute

  Historical Advisor

  Alastair Bruce

  Script Editors

  Sam Symons

  Claire Daxter

  Production Executive

  Kimberley Hikaka

  Business Affairs

  David O’Donoghue

  Unit Publicity

  Milk Publicity

  Post Production Supervisor

  Moira Brophy

  Post Production Assistant

  Ilana Epstein

  Assistant Editors

  Al Morrow

  Sascha Dhillon

  Colourist

  Aidan Farrell

  Online Editors

  Clyde Kellet

  Barney Jordan

  Re-Recording Mixer

  Nigel Heath

  Sound FX Editor

  Adam Armitage

  Dialogue Editors

  Alex Sawyer

  Jessica Ward

  Titles

  Huge Design

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like, first and foremost, to acknowledge the contribution of Gareth Neame. He had the idea in the first place, of making a series about a country house, dealing with the lives of a family and their servants, and since then, he and our producer, Liz Trubridge, have consistently improved the scripts at every stage. We are essentially the triumvirate at the heart of the show. I would also like to thank Ion Trewin who has been bottomlessly patient in editing this book, Doctor Alasdair Emslie, FFOM, for his matchless resourcefulness in supplying medical conditions that will answer the narrative requirements of a plot, my agents, Cathy King and Jeremy Barber, and of course my wife, Emma, and my son, Peregrine, who read the script before anyone else and so weeded out the worst bits. I am very grateful to them all.

  PHOTO SECTION

  The Earl and Countess of Grantham, whose lives are not as uncomplicated as one might think.

  The servants form a line as the car containing the Duke of Crowborough arrives.

  ROBERT: Carson, I hope you weren’t embarrassed this afternoon. I can assure you the Duke very much appreciated his welcome.

  DUKE OF CROWBOROUGH: But I remember this man. Didn’t you serve me when I dined with Lady Grantham in London?

  Mary looks up and her jaw drops. Riding towards her is one of the handsomest, sexiest men she has ever seen in her life.

  Kemal Pamuk, the son of one of the Sultan’s ministers, is in England for the Albanian talks.

  DAISY: Do you think he’ll speak out? Do you think we’ll have a duchess to wait on? Imagine that!

  MRS PATMORE: You won’t be ‘waiting’ on her, whatever happens.

  GWEN: He doesn’t look Turkish at all.

  ANNA: Well, he doesn’t look like any Englishman I’ve ever met, worse luck. I think he’s beautiful.

  ISOBEL: What should we call each other?

  VIOLET: We could always start with Mrs Crawley and Lady Grantham.

  DR CLARKSON: Mrs Drake, the choice is simple. If your husband endures this procedure he may live. If he does not, he will die.

  CORA: Are we to be friends, then?

  VIOLET: We are allies, my dear. Which can be a good deal more effective.

  SYBIL: Why are you so against him?

  MARY: Aside from the fact he’s planning to steal our inheritance?

  EDITH: Your inheritance. It makes no difference to Sybil and me. We won’t inherit, whatever happens.

  MATTHEW: You must have thought me an awful prig when I first arrived.

  ROBERT: Not a prig. Just a man thrust into something he’d never wanted or envisaged, clinging for dear life to his old certainties.

  VIOLET: The Grantham Cup is awarded to – she takes a deep breath to steady herself – to Mr William Molesley for his Countess Cabarrus rose.

  MARY: You know what all work and no play did for Jack.

  MATTHEW: But you think I’m a dull boy, anyway. Don’t you?

  SYBIL: Good evening, everyone!

  STRALLAN: You’re so right, Lady Mary. How clever you are. This is exactly what we have to be aware of.

  MRS HUGHES: In many ways I wanted to accept. But I’m not that farm girl anymore. I was fattered, of course, but I’ve changed.

  Thomas, William, Gwen and Daisy at the fair. Daisy hangs on Thomas’s arm, which is breaking William’s heart.

  The crowd starts to jostle. There are shouts and jeers. Branson approaches Sybil, who is bubbling with enthusiasm.

  BRANSON: Oh, no. Oh, please God, no!

  He takes her up in his arms, as tenderly as a father with his child.

  CREDITS

  Cover photograph by Nick Briggs

  COPYRIGHT

  TEXT © BY JULIAN FELLOWES 2012.

  THE AUTHOR ASSERTS HIS MORAL RIGHT TO BE IDENTIFIED AS THE AUTHOR OF THIS WORK.

  EPISODE 4: WRITTEN BY JULIAN FELLOWES AND SHELA
GH STEPHENSON.

  EPISODE 6: WRITTEN BY JULIAN FELLOWES AND TINA PEPLER.

  A CARNIVAL FILMS/MASTERPIECE CO-PRODUCTION.

  DOWNTON ABBEY SERIES 1, 2, AND 3 AND ALL SCRIPTS. Copyright © 2009 to 2012 by Carnival Film & Television Limited. Downton Abbey® and the Downton Abbey device are trademarks of Carnival Film & Television Limited. Carnival logo © 2005 by Carnival Film & Television Limited. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-223831-3

  EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062238320

  13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  BACK AD

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollins.com

  * I was keen on Highclere to play Downton Abbey from the start, because it is an extraordinary expression of aristocratic confidence, a loud statement of the value of aristocracy. The house was built, or rather, adapted, in the 1830s, at the very beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, by Sir Charles Barry who was working on the Houses of Parliament at the time. Knowing as we did that the series, if it was going to run at all, would trace the decline of this particular class there seemed to be a nice irony in choosing a house that was so confident of their worth and value, and you get that from the first moment you arrive, when you enter the great atrium hall to find the coats of arms of every bride reaching all the way up to the ceiling. Somehow that seemed right, as a comment on Robert’s melancholy appreciation that these will prove to be the last days of summer for his kind. These houses were deliberately designed to look monumental, and when you enter any of them, even Blenheim, you will find they are not quite as big as they look from outside, although they are big enough, Lord knows. But Highclere has the added advantage of a very straightforward plan. On the left of the entrance is the small library, followed by the large library, the painted room, the drawing room, the smoking room which we don’t use, the staircase, the door to the kitchens, and the circuit is complete with the dining room. Once they’ve been shown that plan, it becomes a very easy one for the audience to follow. It’s the same with the bedrooms; there’s a square gallery running round the hall and the bedrooms are off it. So the audience never has to wonder how they got to the library or where precisely is the drawing room. It’s all absolutely clear, and that’s a big advantage in filming. Basically, these are the rooms we use to show how the Crawleys live, and these are the rooms we film in.

  † Daisy, the scullery maid, is up before anyone. Her first job of the day is to wake the other servants.

  * We built the kitchens and the attics at Ealing Studios because in all of these houses those are the bits that are completely changed, either to be used for other, more modern purposes, or so run down that you’d have to rebuild them anyway. The advantage is that having standing sets at Ealing gives us flexibility. Highclere has other activities going on and we have to fit round those so we have the option of going to Ealing. We’ve also built Robert’s dressing room there, and Mary’s bedroom – which is sometimes redecorated to be someone else’s. The doors of these rooms are copied from the bedroom doors at Highclere, as well as the windows and, through the glass, we see great panoramic cycloramas of the park. The point of all this brilliant craftsmanship is that we’re never completely stuck for something to do.

  † One of Daisy’s jobs is to creep into the bedrooms – the only time she ever went into the upstairs rooms – and build the fires. This was done for me just once in my life, and I cannot tell you the sense of luxury it conveys. The maid wore gloves, thick felt gloves, so you wouldn’t hear as she put the fire together. Everything was done very quietly and then lit, so that when you woke up there was the fire already burning in the grate.

  * The challenge at the beginning of any series is to give enough information to follow the whole show but to convey it without it feeling indigestible. Brian Percival was the director of the first episode, the ninety-minute one, and is now the father director of the series; he usually does the first block and the last block, and has become the authority for other directors to refer to, in terms of the Downton style. He came up with an extraordinary shot to introduce the house and the life being lived in it. Daisy is first seen in the Ealing set climbing the kitchen staircase, but the top of these stairs is a replica of the real one at Highclere, so she is then picked up coming out through the glass screen at Highclere and is taken round the hall and through the libraries, until we lose Daisy and pick up Thomas so he can conduct us out of the library, past the drawing room door, through the hall again, past the staircase and into the dining room. In a single shot the audience has the whole layout of the ground floor that we’re going to use, the way the servants work within it, where they come in and go out, as well as all the different tasks that are being undertaken; Brian shows us how there is a pecking order of command, from top to bottom. And all this information has been given in three minutes. A marvellous piece of work.

  * At the beginning we wanted the audience to understand that this was a show essentially about two groups of people living in one house, but with different functions within it, and the first few scenes are about that. They define the chain of command so that when the junior footman says ‘I’m not late, am I?’ and the senior footman replies ‘You’re late when I say you’re late’, we immediately know which one is the more powerful in the set-up.

  † This was the moment when electricity was gradually spreading through England. Reasonably sophisticated people could deal with it, but it was still sufficiently new that there were people (in this case Daisy) who were alarmed. The point was that few really spotted its significance. Even Robert shows later he couldn’t see the point of having it in the kitchens. Of course, by the time the second series starts, in 1916, things have moved on and the whole house has been electrified.

  * I was rather sorry when this was cut because when Mrs Hughes says, ‘It’s all right, Thomas. I’m not countermanding Mr Carson’s orders’, what she means is that she understands Thomas is not under her direct control, so again the audience would have been given the sense that there is a very complicated precedence among these people. In fact, the female staff, apart from the kitchen workers, were under the housekeeper, the male staff answered to the butler, and the kitchen was controlled by the cook. It’s not therefore just a simple case of there being the family and the servants. Not by any means.

  * Thomas: ‘And they’re off.’ What we are doing here is giving a sense of an unbreakable routine, a life lived by bells, bells that kick off the upstairs life, bells that summon them to various tasks, and the servants have to
try and get their breakfast down before the bells start to ring. They know that once the working day begins, it doesn’t end until everyone goes to bed.

  * Ironing newspapers is a cliché in a way because everyone knows it was done; but on the other hand a lot of people still think they were ironed to make them flat, as opposed to being ironed so that the ink would dry. It is sometimes quite fun to correct these common misapprehensions.

  * The challenge of an opening episode, as I keep saying, is to give the audience enough information so that they can follow the show. The reason I chose the sinking of the Titanic to begin with, was because the Titanic is an iconic disaster. There are very few people who’ve never heard of the Titanic and most of us have a fairly accurate idea of when it took place, which is just before the First World War. By sinking two off-screen characters on the Titanic it is a shorthand way of saying we are in England and it is just before the First World War. These characters are not living in Queen Victoria’s reign, but during the aftermath of the long Edwardian summer, in that seemingly placid period just before the war would shake everything up. The audience knows all this because the script contains one word, Titanic, or indeed from the moment when Robert opens the newspaper and they see those familiar four funnels. You don’t have to spend lots of time explaining. This one incident tells them what they need to know. As it happens, I was later asked to write the mini-series of Titanic, but, in case anyone is interested, that was a complete coincidence.

 

‹ Prev