Jessica Brown Findlay, the Downton Abbey star, says the cast got demob happy towards the end of filming the new series and had some fun placing a whoopee cushion beneath each other.

Happily, Dame Maggie Smith was not subjected to such japes. “You just don’t do that to her,” the actress told me at the V Festival in Chelmsford.

She was a guest in Virgin Media’s luxurious Louder Lounge along with Tom Watson, Labour’s own witchfinder general. I trust all the hospitality will be declared.

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Meet my mate: Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery and her BFF

Video includes:
Julian Fellowes, Phyllis Logan, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Froggatt, Jim Carter, Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville and Zoe Boyle.

Thanks to misfolly for uploading for those of us outside the UK!

Source: Enchanted Serenity of Period Films (a most recommended link for all Downton Abbey fans!)

The uptown boy from Downton
Oxbridge-educated Dan Stevens has been hailed as the new Colin Firth — and, happily for us, has a bad habit of leaking secret about the hit series that made his name…

Added slightly bigger sized pictures from the recent Vogue spread featuring the Downton Abbey sisters, and the clean version (without text) of Vanity Fair‘s portrait with Jessica Brown-Findlay, Holliday Grainger and Susannah Fielding.

A Class Apart — An out-of-fashion writer, a broadcaster in meltdown and a potentially “suicidally silly” script? As “Downton Abbey” returns, John Preston tracks the unlikely genesis of the smash hit drama.

Princess Anne Theatre

Screening followed by Q&A with writer Julian Fellowes, executive producer Gareth Neame, actors Joanne Froggatt and Dan Stevens, and Laura Mackie ITV Director of Drama Commissioning.

Julian Fellowes’ BAFTA winning drama Downton Abbey is back for a second series this autumn with all the regular cast including Dame Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Brendan Coyle, Joanne Froggatt and Dan Stevens.

Returning to Downton Abbey in 1916, we see the effects of The First World War on the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who work for them. The new series sees the return of all the much loved characters whose intertwined lives are rendered more complicated by wartime and its impact on the great house itself. And when the storms of war have finally cleared, will the way of life known by all the inhabitants of Downton have changed forever?

New faces joining the cast of Downton Abbey include Amy Nuttall, Iain Glen, Zoe Boyle, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Cal Macaninch.

Downton Abbey is a Carnival Films production, written by Julian Fellowes, executive produced by Gareth Neame and produced by Liz Trubridge.

With thanks to ITV and Carnival Films.

Public Tickets: £7.50 – Click Here

* Mon 12 18:30

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Michelle Ryan, Harry Treadaway and Jessica Brown-Findlay backstage at the Virgin Media Louder Lounge, V Festival 2011.

Check out the brand new posters for Albatross featuring a fierce-looking Jessica Brown-Findlay!

By Hannah Nathanson

Jessica Brown-Findlay is enjoying a rare day off from cramped corsets and aristocratic airs. For the past six months she’s been filming the second series of Downton Abbey, in which she plays the free-spirited Lady Sybil, youngest and most bohemian of the Crawley sisters, complete with avant-garde silk pantaloons. Lady Sybil was a plum first television role for the 21-year-old actress from Berkshire who had longed to be a prima ballerina. Up until three years ago, she was training as a ballet dancer at the Arts Educational School in Chiswick, or ‘Hogwarts for ballet’ as she puts it, having appeared with the Kirov at the Royal Opera House aged 15. But an ankle injury in her final year shattered her dreams and she enrolled instead at Central Saint Martins to study fine art. While there she joined the acting classes and spent most of her time watching Sofia Coppola films. ‘The thing I missed most about ballet was the performance and becoming a different character. I couldn’t live without that,’ she says in a clipped voice that would be very Lady Sybil were it not for a viscous, husky finish.

As an unknown, Jessica auditioned for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. She made it to the final two, narrowly missing out to Mia Wasikowska: ‘But I have no regrets because it meant that I found an agent and got to read the script for Albatross.’ Director Niall MacCormick’s big-screen debut (his television work includes the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Long Walk to Finchley, Albatross is a coming-of-age Brit flick set in a coastal town in Sussex. Niall knew exactly the sort of personality he wanted for the central character, Emelia, a 17-year-old wild child who ends up having an affair with her best friend’s father. ‘I was looking for a girl who could tell someone to f*** off and die and for the audience to still feel they were actually quite charming,’ he explains.
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The cast are enjoying their return to Highclere Castle.

Jessica Brown-Findlay looking gorgeous alongside Holliday Grainger and Susannah Fielding.

Downton goes to war. As the action moves between the manicured lawns of Downton Abbey and the filth of the trenches, Radio Times has a glimpse of things to come.

At the press launch for series two of ITV’s smash hit period drama Downton Abbey – held at the real Downton, Highclere Castle in Berkshire – Radio Times spoke to cast members Jessica Brown-Findlay (Lady Sybil) and Allen Leech (Branson). In a highly entertaining chat, they discuss corpsing, breaking props, handbrake turns, Sybil’s drinking problem and much more.

The Plot

The first series ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Series Two explodes on to the screen with the full horror and carnage of life in the trenches of the Somme in 1916.

The Earl is desperate to get into uniform and play his useful part in the war effort. Lady Cora must adjust to her three headstrong daughters, Mary, Edith and Sybil, becoming fiercely independently-minded young women. And there are any number of affairs of the heart yet to be resolved.

Downton has been turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, with the daughters helping out by becoming drivers and nurses. Real amputees were hired as extras. The family’s genteel pace of life has been turned into turmoil. Observes the Earl: ‘War is now reaching its long fingers into Downton, scattering our chicks.’

As the war draws to a close in 1918, Downton — and the rest of the world — faces up to another catastrophe: a Spanish flu pandemic claims 50 million lives.

From a more practical viewpoint, explains producer Liz Trubridge: ‘It’s exciting taking characters who did nothing for themselves before the war — they didn’t even plump a cushion or dress themselves — and plunging them into an unfamiliar situation’.

After the 90-minute opening episode, there will be six more of 75 minutes each and a 90-minute finale, followed at Christmas by a two-hour special set on New Year’s Eve 1919. A third series is also being discussed, set in the Twenties.

(…)

The Daughters

It falls to Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown-Findlay) to deliver one of the most poignant lines of the new series, as she trains to become an auxiliary nurse. ‘Sometimes it seems as if all the men I ever danced with are now dead,’ she says, reflecting on the heavy loss of life in the war.

Read more here

A film made entirely on location in the Isle of Man is set for a UK release in October.

Albatross, which stars Julia Ormond, Jessica Brown-Findlay, Felicity Jones and Sebastian Koch, was shot in 2009.

Among the locations for the film were the historic house Ravenscliffe near Douglas Head and Port St Mary Harbour.

Economic Minister Allan Bell said: “This film really shows the beauty and diversity of locations that the Isle of Man has to offer film-makers.”

He added: “One of the many considerations that come into play when we are considering involvement in a film project is how well the script fits the natural locations of the Island and in how many ways the Island can benefit from any possible collaboration – Albatross ticked all the boxes”.

Source: BBC News

The trailer for Albatross was released a few days ago! You can watch it below. HQ screen captures can be found in our gallery.

Watch video interview with Thomas, Carson, Anna, Sybil, Edith and Mrs. Hughes chatting about season 2 of Downton Abbey…