Though his name may not be immediately familiar, if you've seen a movie or watched television sometime in the last 40 years, you've seen English actor Jim Carter. Now best known for his Emmy-nominated role as the unflappable butler Mr. Carson on Downton Abbey, his work in the Academy-award winning Shakespeare in Love and the original The Singing Detective series showcase his versatility, and then there's his work with the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. We sat down with Carter to discuss the widespread appeal of Downton Abbey, shooting at the magnificent Highclere Castle and a possible love connection for Mr. Carson.
I'm very much looking forward to Series 3, as is everyone. The show really has such a huge fan base all over the world really. I am curious is there a different reception for the British fans and between American fans or fans around the world? The American reception is fantastically enthusiastic, I have to say. I get recognized more in New York than I do in London. And people seem amazingly enthusiastic and absolutely love the show with a passion. Which is great! I had a couple of hours to myself this afternoon and I popped down to MoMA and people there go, "Oh Mr. Carson! We love the show! We love the show! Oh my goodness!" You know, "Is Lady Mary going to get married?" They really follow it with a passion. You know, since the show came out in England and then there was a little gap before the show came to America. It was very successful in England, but the success in America pushed it globally, really. It just became a global success. And it showed in over a hundred countries and they love it, and it's just fantastic!
Well its interesting. I just started watching the Forsyte Saga—and I don't know much about British television aside from watching Dr. Who when I was a kid—but is there anything that is unique that you think—besides spectacular acting, of course—why Downton has really exploded the way that it did? Well one thing is that it's original. A lot of costume drama is based on a novel, you know, a Jane Austen novel or a Dickens novel, or something like that. But this is original material. You know, no one has seen it before so nobody knows what's going to happen. If you know, you dramatize Sense and Sensibility or Jane Eyre, then people do know what's going to happen. So that's part of it. I think that it's multi-stranded, multi-character is also different. A drama is often just one story with some subsidiary stories but this is. We follow 10 or 12, 13, or 14 people. People invest in different ones. Some love Lady Mary, some love to hate O'Brian, some detest Thomas, some love Daisy the kitchen maid. So, I think that has contributed to its success.
And its also, it's not cynical. So much of TV is cynical and dwells on the worst side of human nature. This doesn't. It's kind of optimistic in a way. And, it's romantic. You know, there's no sex, there's no graphic sex, there's no death—well there's no violence, there's no men with guns, which seems to appear in so many things nowadays. You know, it's romantic. And I love watching it because, some dinners I settle down with my wife and my daughter, who's now just nineteen, and there's not many things you can watch together as a family, it finishes the week off. We sit down and finish the week off with Downton, and finish the week off together, and that's lovely.
Well, if I'm not mistaken, the scenes at Highclere Castle are just the sort of "upstairs" scenes and exteriors. So you probably haven't seen a lot of the different scenes your character is not in, it's probably a lot of new stuff. Yes, and when you sit down to watch it, it's been six months since you filmed it and you forget. I mean, as the butler, I'm upstairs and downstairs more than most, but, any private bedroom scenes or private dialogue scenes you sort of forget about really. So when you see it all put together you go, "Ahh, ohhh!" Plus, we will shoot two episodes at a time. We will shoot all the scenes in my little study, my little office, for those two episodes, all in one go, one after the other after the other to stay in one location. So you forget how it connects together, the story.
The estate itself, the castle, is just so magnificent. It reads on television as being absolutely enormous. Is it actually as grand and as beautiful as it looks? Yeah. What you see is what you get. We use the big entrance hall, and on the left is the big red library, with all the original books and astonishing things, and a little drawing room beyond that we don't tend to use as much. And then the big drawing room and the dining room and there's more. There's a lot more than that. It goes on, there's rooms upstairs. We've used a few of the bedrooms, we used one when the footman who died, as a result of wounds in the war, William. The bedroom we used for him the film crew decorated. The bathroom off of it was just rough plaster and wrecked, you know. I don't know how many rooms there are, maybe ninety rooms, and most of them are empty, or, not quite derelict, but in disrepair. So, I think of us coming to Highclere three years ago was financially very beneficial for them. It pushed tourist business through the roof. Tourists come from all over the world now to visit it. So it financially has been a huge boom for them. Its a very expensive place to keep open.
Speaking of your character, who I think is probably in many ways, at least to me, the most beloved, because he seems to have a relationship with everyone. Whether it's the family or whether it's his staff, he has this compassion. And a dedication to the estate itself. So I wonder, thinking forward, what would Carson do: Would he ever retire? What would he do? Well I've been thinking about that. What would he be like if he retired? He wouldn't be able to cope. The man can barely dress himself. Butlers have people to help them dress as well. I have an old boy, a kid, to help me dress, like a valet. He's absolutely incapable of spending time on his own. Because he's institutionalized, he's always worked there, he's always worked with a team, likes the rhythm of the day, he's like a long term prisoner, set by the house.
So say, right, there you are, you're free, I think he'd just implode, you know. I think you would be utterly dependent on the generosity of your employer. So, presumably, either you'd stay on and room in the house and still eat in the servants quarters or you'd have a little cottage on the grounds, something like that. With Mrs. Hughes...
You know, I actually wrote that down! Are we going to see a love connection? I mean, this is the theme that comes up in all these interviews. You just have to see. Autumn love, the best kind. You know, who knows? That's purely up to Julian Fellowes, but I think the weight of public opinion will come to bear on him.
Well Mary and Matthew are together, so anything could happen. Exactly.
So, Julian Fellowes has The Gilded Age, which is going to be set in New York City. You've heard of the show? Oh, no, no.
Oh! Okay, well. I don't think there's much information now. But he's been tapped to create a show set in New York City called The Gilded Age and obviously it's before the time that Downton takes place, pre-WW1. But do you think that the Downton crew will make a trek to the United States at any time? Well we've got to come over and visit Martha Levinson (Shirley MacLaine). She's got to invite us over. They'll need a butler to come with them. We'll step into the Gilded Age, the Gilded Cage. We'll step back in time and there we'll all be.
If you could create a show, whether its about British history or any time period, is there a period that fascinates you as an actor that you say, "Next time I'll tackle this time period." Something you haven't already done obviously! You've done so much. I don't know about as an actor, but the Middle Ages kind of interests me. Its hard to imagine.. I've found it difficult to imagine as a person what life would be like, how incredibly tough of course. You only traveled as far as you could walk in a day, I imagine. Some authentic look at the Middle Age. We've had some Robin Hood kind of things, sort of romanticizing, but something real about that. Although it would involve a lot of beards…wouldn't it?
Lots of beards. I imagine Game of Thrones is sort of of that age. I suppose it is, but it's not an authentic in a way.
That's true. Lots of sword fighting. Yeah, lots of leather and harnesses and...
I just re-watched Shakespeare in Love the other night, which is such an incredible film. Lovely film isn't it.
Both you and your wife [Imelda Staunton] are just amazing in the film. So fun to watch, you bring so much life to these characters. I was wondering, you both won the Screen Actors Award for ensemble cast, what was it like to share that award, not only with this cast, but with your wife? It was lovely. It sort of caught us by surprise. I don't think we even knew we'd been nominated when these lovely statues arrived! We certainly weren't at any event or anything. But it was fabulous that the ensemble was recognized because we did a lot of work on that, a lot of hard work. Endless scenes where Joe Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow were kissing down stage center or we were doing stuff around the background and a lot of fight scenes that were eventually trimmed down to something very small. But all the cast, we got along famously and lovely, with Geoffery Rush and all sorts of great people. The fact that that was recognized was smashing and I'm very, for that, really happy.
I actually just realized, or just read that you were the Singing Detective series. And both of us were in that as well.
Have you done a lot of work together? I know you met on a stage production. Yes, we met on Guys and Dolls. We haven't worked a lot together, we don't seek work together in any way. We both judge work on its own terms rather than because we want to work together. But for many years it wouldn't haven't suited. You know we had a daughter, and she's now nineteen, but when she was younger, we wanted to bring her up ourselves. So we would juggle work so that one was always at home, so, working together, we were often both on sitcoms and various things, but we said we can't both be out at the same time, so no, thanks. That was more important. We did the Wizard of Oz together many, many, many, years ago. She was Dorothy and I was the Cowardly Lion, before our daughter was around. And on Shakespeare in Love we only met one day on that. And Singing Detective we never met—we were in different time zones. Cranford...well, Cranford, we met on that a little bit, and our daughter had a three-line part when she was about fifteen or fourteen, so that was lovely.
My last question, sort of a silly one, will there be another Very Carson Christmas this year? Can we expect a sequel, will there be more? You see you do these things...you think it's a little thing but it ends up on bloody YouTube! You see, I didn't know any of those songs, I'm not musical at all. And they said, "Oh this one!" I can't even remember what they were! They had to write them out for me because I was going, "What is this? I've never heard this song in my life! All the single ladies? All the single ladies?" No, there won't be. [laughs]
Season 3 of Downton Abbey airs on PBS beginning Sunday, January 6th at 9 p.m.
