{"id":50242,"date":"2022-02-16T16:49:43","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T16:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&#038;p=50242"},"modified":"2022-02-16T17:00:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T17:00:35","slug":"close-read-new-downton-abbey-trailer","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/close-read-new-downton-abbey-trailer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Close Read of the New \u2018Downton Abbey: A New Era\u2019 Trailer"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_50243\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50243\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-50243\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/02\/4178_D023_01947_RC1644878405-e1645028245354.jpg?w=1024\" alt=\"Kevin Doyle and Michelle Dockery in Downton Abbey: A New Era\" width=\"1024\" height=\"574\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-50243\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kevin Doyle and Michelle Dockery in <i>Downton Abbey: A New Era<\/i> (Photo: Ben Blackall \/ 2022 Focus Features)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Just as we\u2019re all getting into HBO\u2019s new \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/gilded-age-who-are-we-shipping-american-downton\/\">American <em>Downton<\/em><\/a>,\u201d a.k.a. <a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/gilded-age-valentines-day-recap-american-downton\/\"><em>The Gilded Age<\/em><\/a>, a new preview of the latest iteration of <em>Downton<\/em> Classic drops. Yesterday, Focus Features released the first full-length trailer for <em>Downton Abbey: A New Era<\/em>. The clip is packed with new details we haven\u2019t seen in the initial <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/vaSIjLJJRuc\" target=\"_blank\">teaser<\/a>, including a whole heretofore unknown plotline.<\/p>\n<p>Now that we\u2019ve had a day or so to watch the new trailer over and over, we\u2019re ready to dive in and overanalyze all the upstairs\/downstairs drama.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters May 20\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wN0Spmq610Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We know from the teaser, released back in November, that the second <em>Downton Abbey<\/em> film will revolve at least in part around the revelation that Maggie Smith\u2019s Dowager Countess has \u201ccome into the possession of a villa in the South of France,\u201d which has something to do with a man she met years ago. The implication, of course, is that she had some kind of youthful fling with this mysterious man. (I mean, we know Violet got around in her day. Remember that deposed Russian prince or whatever?) It\u2019s unclear whether she and this man \u201cmet\u201d before or after her marriage to the previous Lord Grantham, but in the new trailer we learn from Isabel (Penelope Wilton) that they only \u201cspent a few days together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, no one has any clue why this guy would just up and gift her a villa\u2014it\u2019s actually not even clear from the trailer whether he\u2019s still alive, but I think it\u2019s safe to <em>assume<\/em> that he\u2019s died and bequeathed it to the Dowager. And there is the suggestion of something\u2026untoward. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t look good for Papa if she felt the need to keep it a secret,\u201d we hear Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) muse.<\/p>\n<p>So, Lord and Lady Grantham (Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern), Lady Edith and that duke she married (Carmichael and Harry Hadden-Paton), Branson and his new wife (Allen Leech and Tuppence Middleton) and Carson (Jim Carter) are all off to the Riviera to uncover the secrets of the Dowager\u2019s past. We see an unidentified couple (I <em>think <\/em>this is Jonathan Zacca\u00ef and Nathalie Baye) welcoming them to \u201cthe Villa of the Doves,\u201d and Lord Grantham asking Zacca\u00ef\u2019s character why he invited them there. Now, if I were speculating wildly, I might wonder if the fact that Lady Edith\u2014who herself once concealed an illegitimate child\u2014is the one wondering aloud about how the Dowager\u2019s secret looks for Lord Grantham might indicate <em>something<\/em> about Zacca\u00ef\u2019s character. Like, is he the Dowager\u2019s long lost secret lovechild? I mean, I have no idea how that would work, but like I said, it\u2019s been done in the Downton-verse before so\u2026<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_50255\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50255\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-50255\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/02\/4178_D012_00761_RC1643221470-e1645030487818.jpg?w=1024\" alt=\"Laura Haddock and Michael Fox in Downton Abbey: A New Era\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-50255\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">4178_D012_00761_RC<br \/>Laura Haddock stars as Laura Haddock and Michael Fox in <i>Downton Abbey: A New Era<\/i> (Photo: Ben Blackall \/ Focus Features)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Now, the big reveal in the new trailer\u2014and if this was previously reported elsewhere, I sure didn\u2019t know about it\u2014is that, in a pretty meta turn of events, the Crawleys agree to allow a film to be shot at Downton Abbey. This, then, not only accounts for the glamorous platinum blonde (Laura Haddock) seen arriving at the estate in the teaser, but also for the presence of Hugh Dancy, who plays the film\u2019s producer and director Mr. Barber, and Dominic West, who appears to play the film within the film\u2019s leading man.<\/p>\n<p>So, while everyone else is off in France, it seems that Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is taking the lead on the film front. \u201cYou\u2019re the captain now,\u201d Lord Grantham tells her. Which, again, is a clever bit of metanarrative in that this is exactly how people in Mary\u2019s position would have managed to keep their ancestral estates profitable in the 20th century.\u00a0<em>Downton Abbey\u00a0<\/em>itself is filmed at just such a place!<\/p>\n<p>Also, it looks like Mary\u2019s relationship with Dancy\u2019s character might not be purely professional. There\u2019s no sign of her husband in this\u2014you really have to respect Matthew Goode\u2019s resolute refusal to participate in anymore <em>Downton Abbey <\/em>nonsense\u2014and Barber asks whether there\u2019s \u201ctrouble in paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t need me to tell you that marriage is a novel full of plot twists along the way,\u201d she tells him. I mean, when it comes to <em>Downton<\/em> one might replace \u201cnovel\u201d with \u201csoap opera,\u201d but we get the point. And hey, if Hugh Dancy is our Matthew Goode consolation prize, well, we could all do a lot worse!<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_50253\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50253\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-50253\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-16-at-11.20.47-AM-e1645030251966.png?w=1024\" alt=\"Dominic West and Rob James-Collier in &lt;i&gt;Downton Abbey: A New Era&lt;\/i&gt;\" width=\"1024\" height=\"567\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-50253\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dominic West and Rob James-Collier in <i>Downton Abbey: A New Era<\/i> (Image courtesy of Focus Features)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>And speaking of plot twists, while the whole film crew and pushy Hollywood types and temperamental actors running around smashing things has the downstairs staff all discombobulated, it looks like there might be sparks flying between Thomas (Rob James Collier) and West\u2019s character. The two of them seem to share a meaningful look at one point in the trailer. Which, ok fine, another fleeting, probably unconsummated flirtation for poor sad gay old Thomas, who I suppose we all knew wouldn\u2019t end up happily in love and cohabitating with that gorgeous royal butler from the first movie. Oh well.<\/p>\n<p>The trailer ends with a classic Dowager Countess mic drop. Chatting with Isabel about, presumably, the new-fangled talkie being filmed at Downton, Violet quips that she thought the best thing about films is that you didn\u2019t have to hear what people were saying. \u201cIt would be even better if you couldn\u2019t see them either,\u201d she says\u2014possibly referencing the fact that the release of <em>Downton Abbey: A New Era<\/em> has been pushed back to May 20?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional random observations and questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As we saw in the teaser, former Irish socialist revolutionary chauffer Tom Branson finally marries an appropriately aristocratic (and yet also slightly outsidery) woman: Lucy Smith, the illegitimate daughter of Crawley cousin and royal lady in waiting Lady Bagshaw (<a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/the-crown-imelda-staunton-netflix\/\">Imelda Staunton<\/a>), from the first movie. I\u2019d assume <em>A New Era<\/em> opens with their wedding.<\/li>\n<li>As fans have already pointed out, Hugh Bonneville looks super tanned in the new trailer. And actually, if you go back and look at the teaser, the scene in which Violet breaks the news about the villa was clearly reshot.<\/li>\n<li>Wasn\u2019t the Dowager supposed to be dying or something at the end of the first movie? What happened to that?<\/li>\n<li>Is Daisy married to a footman yet? Any footman? Does anyone care?<\/li>\n<li>I detect <em>almost<\/em> zero Mr. Bates and <em>exactly <\/em>zero Baxter in this trailer, thank god.<\/li>\n<li>What little Molesly there is in this is still entirely too much Molesly.<\/li>\n<li>I miss Mary\u2019s bangs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":50243,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,3324,16],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v18.5 (Yoast SEO v20.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Close Read of the New \u2018Downton Abbey: A New Era\u2019 Trailer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The first full-length trailer for Downton Abbey: A New Era has dropped. 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