Interview: DOWNTON ABBEY'S Penelope Wilton

The Great War is over and a long-awaited engagement is on, but all is not tranquil at DOWNTON ABBEY as wrenching social changes, romantic intrigues, and personal crises grip the majestic English country estate for a third thrilling season.

With the return of its all-star cast plus guest star Academy Award®-winner Shirley MacLaine, DOWNTON ABBEY, Season 3 airs over seven Sundays on PBS beginning on January 6, 2013. BWW brings you a series of interviews with the award-winning cast of this popular PBS series. Next up actress Penelope Wilton.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Penelope Wilton

When your son is the groom and the venue is Downton Abbey, a wedding can become all-consuming for a meddlesome mother. Not for Isobel Crawley, says Penelope Wilton.

“At the beginning of the series Isobel is looking forward to the wedding of her son to Mary. But the thing is that she’s the groom’s mother, not the bride’s mother. So it’s rather taken out of her hands.”

Isobel is all too happy to take a back seat. “I don’t think she minds too much really. She goes along with it because that’s what Matthew wants. The thing about Isobel is that she’s not a nosey parker - she’s not somebody who involves herself or will interfere with her son’s life. He’s been through a war; he nearly lost the use of his legs; he’s a grown, mature man with a good head on his shoulders. She is perfectly happy to steer him and give her advice when she’s asked, but not unless.”

Besides, Isobel has plenty of other things with which to concern herself. During the war she was involved with the hospital and kept very busy. Now she finds a new project.

“The fall out from the war meant a lot of women lost their husbands - whole villages of men were wiped out. So women found themselves in very difficult positions financially and some of them had to resort to undesirable ways of making a living. Isobel is trying to help women who have found it very difficult.”

Needless to say, Isobel winds up in hot water. “She sometimes bites off more than she can chew! I mean to take on a lot of ‘women of the night’ and not expect there to be a certain amount of difficulty in that situation... But she’s a woman of principle so she fights that. And also she has humour so she understands what she’s doing; it’s just that sometimes she doesn’t always think ahead.”

You can tell by her tone that, three series in, Isobel Crawley is a character Penelope Wilton has rather come to like.

“I do like her; I think she’s a formidable woman but she’s got her heart in the right place. She’s sometimes very misguided in as far as she can be a bull in a china shop, and I also think she feels frustrated by the woman’s role at that time - she would like women to have more freedom to follow their path. Perhaps she should have been born in another time because she sees changes; she’s an intelligent woman. And after the war I think a lot of people found themselves in her position: they had had a role and then they found it difficult to find another role for themselves, especially if they were widowed as Isobel is. She wants to be a useful person, not knitting tea cosies and being kind to people in an arm’s length way; she wants to be hands on.”

Recently, Wilton found herself in America doing the publicity rounds for her film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The second question, however, was almost always off topic.
“Every person who came in, and there must have been 25 to 50 a day, always asked about Downton