History Trivia / DowntonAbbey

* CreatorChosenCasting: Creator/JulianFellowes wrote the series with Hugh Bonneville, Creator/BrendanCoyle and Creator/MaggieSmith in mind.

* RuleThirtyFourCreatorReactions: The cast had mixed reactions to the porn parody ''Down on Abby''. While being interviewed on ''Series/{{Conan}}'', Creator/MichelleDockery remarked of her porn doppleganger "That's me, is it? The one with the [[BuxomIsBetter extremely large breasts]]?".[[note]]Ironically, she was pointing to her character's AbsurdlyYouthfulMother.[[/note]] During a red carpet event, Hugh Bonneville said he thought the title was hilarious and that if somebody got him a copy, he would invite the rest of the cast to watch it.

* AbilityOverAppearance: Anna Smith was originally meant to be slightly older, because the creators didn't want an age-gap between her and Bates. However, they were so satisfied with Joanne Froggatt, who is seventeen years younger than Creator/BrendanCoyle, that the relationship was turned into a MayDecemberRomance.

* ColbertBump: ''Series/SaturdayNightLive''[='s=] surprisingly accurate summary of the show attracted a lot of attention to it: "There's a MILF and a dad and they've got three daughters named Hot (Mary), Way Hot (Sybil), and The Other One (Edith). And they all hang out with this old lady that looks like a chicken. We hated her at first, but then we got high and [[DeadpanSnarker she made us crack up!]] ''[...]'' There's also a whole bunch of tuxedo people who live in the basement and their lives ''suck''! Get this: They always have to stand up at the same time. Their names are: Nice Guy (Bates), Mean Guy (Thomas), Mouse Girl (Daisy), and Super Bitch (O'Brien)."

* DuelingShows: With the revival of ''Series/UpstairsDownstairs'' (notably, the announcement that Creator/ShirleyMacLaine had been cast as Cora's mother was deliberately timed to upstage the press launch for ''Upstairs''' second series). ''Downton'' came out the clear winner as an international mega-hit for all six series, while ''Upstairs'' was cancelled after its second series.

* McLeaned:
** Sybil was killed off because Jessica Brown-Findlay wanted to leave to pursue her film career.
** Matthew had an even more obvious case than Sybil's, because there had been buzz for months before his character's death about Creator/DanStevens possibly leaving the show. The writers have since admitted that they would have preferred not to kill off Matthew.

** ''Everyone'' in the cast hated shooting the dinner scenes, which often took far longer to film than they should have, with the food quickly starting to stink.

* FakeAmerican: Gary Carr is English -- and unfortunately his rather stage-school attempt at a generic American accent makes this obvious.

* HeyItsThatPlace: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highclere_Castle Highclere Castle]]. Among other works, it was used fairly prominently in ''Series/JeevesAndWooster'', set in the [[GenteelInterbellumSetting interwar period]]... so does this mean that Bertie and his valet will visit in Series 3? Highclere Castle was also the set of Misselthwaite Manor in the 1987 version of Literature/TheSecretGarden.

* HostilityOnTheSet: On the later seasons, Creator/JulianFellowes' tendency to do rewrites on set, with most of the actors having to remain in their tight Edwardian costumes under hot lights as spoiling dinner food fouled the air, did not endear him to many of the main cast. Others had also been alienated by his vindictive tendency to have minor characters killed off offscreen when the actors were too busy doing other work to come back to the show. By the end of the series many were swearing they'd never work with him again, although some did for [[Film/DowntonAbbey the 2019 movie]].

** Creator/MichelleDockery too as the show ended. Her next part in ''Series/GoodBehaviour'' is as far removed from Lady Mary as possible.

* TroubledProduction: The first season went pretty swimmingly, ending up as one of the most acclaimed shows of the year...and then spent the next five years in a morass of problems.
** Many of the actors grew increasingly unhappy with how little they were given to do as the show's scope grew larger, with several of them quitting along the way. Some of these were major characters, forcing Creator/JulianFellowes to hastily write their deaths to explain their absence. The most damaging was Creator/DanStevens as half of the show's major romantic couple Matthew Crawley. Fellowes was so furious at Stevens for this that he refused to so much as let his name be spoken on set for the remainder of the show, and even downplayed Matthew's huge role in the first three series as much as possible, with him hardly ever being mentioned again. This led to the show feeling more like a trashy soap opera and less the highbrow drama as intended, and reviews quickly soured.

** Finally, his writing strategy was to only write the first half of each series ahead of time, then wait to write the rest until filming was underway and he could see how the actors played off each other. This sometimes resulted in some very awkward storytelling as he decided to beef up a character's role, only to discover their actor couldn't commit to the show any further. The worst of these was Charles Edwards as Edith's love interest Michael Gregson, whose departure was so clearly a bad story option that Fellowes simply had him go missing in Germany and left his fate unknown for two years...before finally giving up and having Gregson discovered to have been killed.
** By the time the show ended, it was widely regarded as a joke and Fellowes' slow CreatorBreakdown over all the problems left his reputation quite a bit lower than when he'd started.

** Creator/ KateWinslet and Creator/AlanRickman were in talks to guest star together as a married couple. She couldn't do it because she was expecting a baby and he was interested, but decided against it because she couldn't appear with him.

* RuleThirtyFourCreatorReactions: The cast had mixed reactions to the porn parody ''Down on Abby''. While being interviewed on ''Series/{{Conan}}'', Creator/MichelleDockery remarked of her porn doppleganger "That's me, is it? The one with the [[BuxomIsBetter extremely large breasts]]?". During a red carpet event, Hugh Bonneville said he thought the title was hilarious and that if somebody got him a copy, he would invite the rest of the cast to watch it.

* AbilityOverAppearance: Anna Smith was originally meant to be slightly older, because the creators didn't want an age-gap between Joanne Froggatt and Creator/BrendanCoyle. However, they were so satisfied with her, who is seventeen years younger than him, that the relationship of Anna and Bates was turned into a MayDecemberRomance.