Michele Manelis talks with actor, director, novelist Julian Fellowes, who wrote the screenplay and produced Downton Abbey
In all the television episodes and now the film, did you ever consider sneaking yourself into a scene? You're also an actor, after all.
No, I was never even an extra or a footman or a guest at a ball. I feel that Hitchcock did that, really, and it's difficult to imitate him. I did once, years ago, write myself into a children's series and actually I found it very schizophrenic. One minute you're standing there with all the grown-ups behind the camera talking about framing and then the next minute you're worrying about your mascara.
So much of the show is about British protocol but in the film you also explore some of the social mores of the time, particularly gay relationships. what was it like back in the late-1920s? Were there bars that people clandestinely had to go to?
No, they tended to be movable so that they could get out very quickly. Those kinds of gay bars that you're thinking about with plush walls and padded bars and all that kind of thing, that was all much later. That was really all the kind of late-40s, 50s. In the 20s you would use a space to meet people, to have a dance, to have a drink, whatever but as soon as the police got on to it then it had to move around, so it was very, very difficult. This was a very difficult way of life for people. Presumably there was no smaller percentage of people who were gay then than there are now, The difference was that most of them had to live a lie.