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Michelle Dockery plays the feisty Lady Mary Crawley on DIVA’s hit period drama Downton Abbey. Here, she gives us a personal insight into her stubborn character.

Was it nerve-wracking working alongside Dame Maggie Smith?

Maggie is one of the greatest actresses that we have. I sat next to her at the read-through and I remember she turned to me and said, ‘Oh hello darling’ and gave me a big kiss. At the end of it she said ‘well done’, and I felt my shoulders drop. I knew we were going to get on well.

Tell us about your character, Lady Mary Crawley.

She’s the boy that Lord and Lady Grantham never had and I think Mary feels that her father really wanted a son. That would have made everything a lot smoother for the family inheritance if they’d had a boy. So in that respect Mary is really tough and incredibly stubborn - whichever man her mother pushes in her direction she’s quite reluctant to consider as a potential husband.

There seems to be a lot of sibling rivalry at Downton, why is Edith and Mary’s relationship so tense?

She is very feisty and quite cruel at times to her sister Edith. Because the age-gap between Edith and Mary is so small Edith resents that Mary feels she is entitled to so much more than her. She doesn’t get the same attention from her parents that Mary does and as a result feels invisible. There are some incredibly bitchy moments between the two of them.

The series is set over two years, how does Mary’s character change over this time?

At the start we meet a very feisty young girl and she doesn’t lose any of that feistiness, but something traumatic happens in a later episode that damages her - it forces Mary to grow up and start looking after people.

How does the death of Mary’s lover alter her relationships?

Initially Mary feels that she’s let her mother down terribly, but at the same time it brings them closer together because they share this terrible secret, and that is essentially the essence of Downton Abbey…the secrets that exist between the two worlds of the family and servants and sometimes when those two worlds collide you see one element relying on the discretion of the other in the most serious of circumstances.

What will you do once filming for Downton wraps?

I am really looking forward to doing a play again. It’s only been a year or so, but to me that really feels like a long time to be away from it. When I started acting I was doing theatre all the time and I feel like when I don’t do it I get a little bit scared again.

Catch brand new episodes of Downton Abbey every Thursday @ 11PM/10PM Th-Jkt. Only on DIVA Universal.

Written by DIVA UniversalEditor

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