Maggie Smith gets the last word at Downton

Name: Maggie Smith gets the last word at Downton
Uploaded: 2019-09-19T15:48:47Z
Duration: 10 min 16 s
Description: Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess, can settle an argument at Downton Abbey with one dry line. Sometimes it takes a single word.

Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess, can settle an argument at Downton Abbey with one dry line. Sometimes it takes a single word. more

Maggie Smith plays her as the voice of the old upper class, stubborn and quick, and never shy about saying what everyone else is only thinking. Viewers who know Smith as Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter films will recognize the stare. These are her best lines from Season 3.

Maggie Smith, with styled gray hair, smiles slightly as she looks toward the camera. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess, who says what the rest of the family only thinks.

The first target is a very tall man. Asked if he's really that tall, he says yes. "Thought you might have been walking on stilts," Violet replies. Then she says how much she looks forward to seeing one guest again, because being with her is a reminder "of the virtues of the English." Someone points out that the guest is American. Violet's reply is one word. "Exactly."

Someone has quietly arranged for Sybil and her husband to come for Mary's wedding, and it turns out to be Violet, with her lady's maid Smithers holding the pen. Told she may have been misjudged, she answers, "I'm a woman of many powers." America gets less charity. When a man named Harold hates to leave it, she finds that curious, since she would hate to go there.

Edith's wedding to Anthony Strallan brings out her bluntest side. When Sybil gets cheeky the night before, Violet reminds her that vulgarity is "no substitute for wit." On the day, Anthony starts to back out, and while others try to smooth it over, Violet says to let him go. Nobody should stop him "doing the only sensible thing he's come up with" in months.

An older woman with styled hair, wearing ornate jewelry and a red outfit, looks slightly to her right. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — The night before Edith's wedding, Sybil gets a short lesson in manners.

Afterward Edith has nothing to do at the house, and Violet has no patience for moping. "You're a woman with a brain and reasonable ability. Stop whining and find something to do." When Edith is invited to write a newspaper column, Violet wants to know when she may expect an offer to appear on the London stage. As for Sir Philip, if there is "one thing that I am quite indifferent to," it's his feelings.

Then Sybil dies in childbirth, and the jokes stop. When the family looks for someone to fault, Violet says that "when tragedies strike we try to find someone to blame," and with no one suitable, "we usually blame ourselves." Later she has gentler words for a grieving young man. "I do not speak much of the heart," she says, but "I know well enough the pain when it is broken."

Soon the wit is back. With a journalist in the family, she notes that since they already have "a country solicitor and a car mechanic," it was only a matter of time. Pressed to say something sensible about a woman's place, she sees "no harm in her having some fun before she gets there."

Her best advice comes when someone worries they wouldn't understand a word from a young guest named Rose. Violet has been there. Her husband was a great traveler, so she has "spent many happy evenings without understanding a word." The thing is "to keep smiling and never look as if you disapprove."