When last we saw Maggie Smith, she was literally getting the last word in during last winter's last-ever episode of "Downton Abbey." As her fearsomely funny Dowager Countess character hung with her best frenemy, Isobel Crawley, at the combination wedding reception/New Year's Eve celebration taking place at the titular grand manor house, the scene went like this:
Isobel: “What else could we drink to? We’re going forward into the future, not back into the past.”
Dowager Countess: “If only we had the choice.”
She did. And apparently Smith's opted to go full-steam ahead with the oft-rumored, much-desired big screen version of "Downton Abbey." Multiple reports in British newspapers have the four-time Emmy winner (three of them for "Downton") signing on for the movie. The key source of that news is Michael Fox, the actor who played Downton footman/aspiring farmer Andrew Parker during the final two seasons of the series, which aired on PBS in the U.S. His scoop follows last spring's revelation by Jim Carter, aka the Abbey's longserving no nonsense butler Mr. Carson, that the hit TV series's writers were already working on a script for the film version.
If you can't trust the butler and the footman to know what's going on, who can you trust?
How about series creator Julian Fellowes? At a BBC America party in Hollywood the night before the Emmys last month, Fellowes told the Daily Mail that filming would probably start sometime in 2017.
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That's good news. Still, for countless fans, a movie without her snarky Dowager Countess character in it would have felt like the raspberry meringue pudding that Mrs. Patmore accidentally put salt in during Season One: Totally unappetizing. And Smith had seemed to dash their hopes last winter when she told British talk show host Graham Norton that the Dowager wasn't immortal.
‘By the time we finished (the TV series), she must have been about 110. It couldn’t go on and on, it just didn’t make sense,’ Smith told Norton. When asked if she would appear in a film adaptation, Smith said, ‘I can’t - what age would she be?’”
But maybe the possibility of winning yet another Academy Award was just too enticing to Smith, who already has two Oscars. When last we didn't see her, in fact, she wasn't showing up to collect her Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series last month.
Emmys host Jimmy Kimmel had a bit of fun at her expense, announcing her statuette would be in the Lost & Found at ABC. The next day, Dame Maggie proved she could be a gracious winner — and once again get the last word in — when she responded to Kimmel on theMasterpiece PBS Twitter account:
“I feel the Emmys have been overly generous to me,” Smith wrote. “If Mr. Kimmel could please direct me to the lost and found office, I will try and be on the next flight.”
