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Over the years, we’ve watched the Crawley family weather world wars, opulent balls, romance, death, and evolving social and cultural landscapes. Now, we’ve reached Downton Abbey’s grand finale—for real this time. After 52 episodes across six seasons of television and two feature films, a third one, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (in theaters Friday) marks the final act of Julian Fellowes’s cultural juggernaut of a British period drama.
Michelle Dockery has played Lady Mary, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham, for 15 years. Now, she’s just about ready to leave Lady Mary in the Downton Abbey foyer.
Last week, Dockery walked the red carpet at the film’s world premiere in London, revealing a baby bump under her soft blue custom Prada gown. (She is expecting her first child with her husband, Jasper Waller-Bridge, brother of Phoebe and Isobel.) The dress, Dockery tells Vogue, was actually a “prototype” from when she first worked with Prada on a two-toned red dress for the Emmys 12 years ago. She and her stylist, Cher Coulter, remembered the alternate option and its beautiful blue color.
“We used the same material and color,” Dockery says. “It’s come full circle! Prada was very much at the beginning of my Downton Abbey journey, and to have one of the final moments—at the premiere again—in Prada was special.”
There have been many farewells for Dockery across her time doing Downton, but reading the new film’s script for the first time, the sense of finality truly hit. “There was always the ambition to do a trilogy of films, but I never could have dreamed of it,” she says. “No less than 52 episodes and three movies! We weren’t even thinking beyond the first, but we have really set up a true grand finale here.”
“As we were filming, I felt this real poignancy,” she adds. “We were shooting in locations we know so well, and saying goodbye to those, too—with each scene—was emotional. I really soaked it up.”
The film finds the Crawleys in the 1930s, when Mary’s divorce from her second husband, Henry Talbot, has rendered her a social outcast. “I remember being really shocked by how Mary was treated as a divorced woman,” says Dockery. “We talked about it a lot—how do we lean into those high stakes? It impacts Mary, but it ricochets out to the entire household. Then they all come together to help Mary come back to society. It was a fascinating time of contrasts.”
As they have since the show first aired, Dockery and the cast leaned heavily on Alastair Bruce, Downton Abbey’s historical advisor. “I’ve clung onto him for all the intricate historical details,” she says. “I have really enjoyed having that education, especially for this film—you see both quite subtle and sudden shifts from the ’20s to the ’30s, especially through what it was like to be a woman at that time.”
The costumes, by Anna Robbins, also speak to the period’s evolving conventions. Early on, Mary attends a ball in a backless red dress that feels almost Loewe-like. “That’s my favorite,” says Dockery. “You could see it on a red carpet today, right? Those shapes are really modern now.”
Robbins and Dockery had developed a close relationship, charting Mary’s growth and maturation from the ’10s to the late ’20s in the television series. Seasons 1 and 2 were all Edwardian elegance, with S-bend corsets replacing straighter silhouettes, lace, and high waists; and Lady Mary’s refined, restrained wardrobe reflected her position as the eldest daughter. As the family navigated World War I and women’s rights expanded, hemlines got shorter and jewelry less opulent. Later seasons would see Lady Mary in looser silhouettes, short bob haircuts, and flapper glamour.
“I think it was liberating for Anna and me to push the sense of fashion that came with the ’30s,” Dockery says. “It gave us license to really show how time was moving forward. And it represents the film’s narrative, too—with the passing of the baton for Downton, with Mary’s divorce.”
Indeed, Lady Mary isn’t only testing boundaries with her clothes: in one pivotal scene from the new film, she invites Thomas Barrow, a former footman, upstairs from the servants’ quarters to a cocktail party. “I love how we already see Mary begin to bend the rules and embrace modernity,” says Dockery. “It was heartening to finish the film on those moments of change.”
As she moves into position as head of the household, we also glimpse Mary’s more vulnerable side. For Dockery, it was a joy to explore new emotional depths with a character she’s come to know so well. “It’s a luxury, as an actor, to have a familiar role you really get to live in and revisit,” she says. “And still, each time, Julian wrote something for us that pushes us. He always surprises me.”
Other exciting territory in The Grand Finale involved Mary’s changing relationship with the other Crawley women. For one example, we see a new dynamic emerge with her sister Edith (Laura Carmichael). “It has been magic to play this sister relationship,” says Dockery. “Laura and I finally get into that moment between the sisters where there is mutual respect. You’ve seen the occasional sparring, but also their maturing into real, independent women who respect each other. What a pleasure to play that with Laura.”
Meanwhile, Mary’s mother, Cora, remains a stalwart and comforting presence. “I adore Elizabeth McGovern,” says Dockery. “She’s been just an incredible friend and partner-in-crime. All of us have a bond no one will ever quite understand.” The same is true of her father, Robert, the 7th Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville. “There’s a really powerful feeling in seeing the respect they have for each other now,” she says of Lord Grantham. “It’s been a special father-daughter relationship to play.”
Of course, sadly missing from the grand reunion that was The Grand Finale was the late Maggie Smith, who played Robert’s mother, Violet. Dockery remembers Smith’s wit and sardonic humor on set—and her own Dowagerisms—fondly. A final scene sees Mary survey the empty Downton Abbey hallway as memories of the Dowager Countess and Mary’s late sister Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) flash before her. The sound department actually played the music that would overlay the scene as Dockery acted.
“In some ways, that was a great idea—in others, not so much. I kept bursting into tears!” she says. “The poor makeup department! I had to attempt to look as stoic as Mary is. But it’s a beautiful ending, and a touching tribute to Maggie.”
Dockery first saw the film at a cast screening a few months ago. What first set her off: when Robert asks Mr. Bates, his faithful valet, “Do you remember where it all began?” “I just cried and cried from there,” she says. Bonneville, sitting behind her, grabbed her hand for the last 15 minutes and didn’t let go.
A phenomenon from its first season in 2010, Downton Abbey stood out from the steady supply of small-screen Brontë and Austen adaptations for being a new story—albeit with jaunty nods to real-life nobility and historical figures. “When we first aired, period dramas weren’t being celebrated like they are now,” says Dockery. (Just this year, we’ve had the likes of Miss Austen, the Mitford sisters drama Outrageous, and, of course, Season 3 of Fellowes’s The Gilded Age air.) “It was a risk to do it—the appetite wasn’t there. I’ll never forget the call when I got it, and I feel proud that we’ve made something that’s resonated.”
“It was the beginning of a new golden age for television,” Dockery continues. “You see the influence Downton has on shows like Bridgerton, and Julian is going forth with The Gilded Age. I’m sure that’s a lot of the original Downton audience.” Dockery, will always appreciate Fellowes’s ability to “write for women so well, with strength and vulnerability and joy.”
Lady Mary was Michelle Dockery’s breakout role, paving the way to parts in 2011’s Hanna; Joe Wright’s 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley; and the 2014 action thriller Non-Stop, alongside Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore. After Downton wrapped in 2015, Dockery starred as a con artist recently out of prison in the drama series Good Behavior, and in Netflix’s western miniseries Godless in 2019. She’s excited to keep expanding—and to play more real-life figures, like former British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman in the forthcoming Isabella Blow biopic, The Queen of Fashion.
“Our [leader], Andrea Riseborough, is amazing,” she says. “I loved stepping into the incredible Alexandra’s shoes—how fantastic it was to really get to know the characteristics and thinking of a real person who existed! I watched countless YouTube videos, read all of her writing. I’m intensely drawn to these kinds of extraordinary women.”
Dockery hopes people will be “satisfied” by the way Downton Abbey ties things up. “In some ways, it’s not really the end—it is the end, but I can feel the continuation of these characters and their lives beyond it,” she reflects. “I hope people feel excited for Mary’s new chapter.”
