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From ‘Downton Abbey’ to ‘Spanish Princess’: Why TV tortures Laura Carmichael

The once and future Lady Edith talks about her beleaguered new Starz character and about reuniting with her "Downton" costars for this fall's movie.

Laura Carmichael as Margaret Pole in Starz's "The Spanish Princess," a miniseries about Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, that premieres on Sunday, May 5.
Laura Carmichael as Margaret Pole in Starz's "The Spanish Princess," a miniseries about Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, that premieres on Sunday, May 5.Read moreCourtesy of Starz

When Downton Abbey ended its PBS run in 2016, Laura Carmichael’s Lady Edith was as pleased as we’d ever seen her, having achieved what her father considered a brilliant marriage to a man with whom she also happened to be deeply in love.

For the character who’d long been locked in battle with her older sister, the imperious Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), and who’d endured repeated heartaches and humiliations, it was an unexpectedly happy ending, one we can only hope this fall’s Downton Abbey movie won’t completely unravel.

But on-screen heartache continues to call to Carmichael, who returns to television Sunday in Starz’s eight-episode mini-series The Spanish Princess. In the latest installment in the adaptations of Philippa Gregory’s historical novels, she’s playing Lady Margaret “Maggie” Pole, one of the last Plantagenets left standing after Britain’s War of the Roses, the bloody conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster that inspired Game of Thrones. Maggie’s feelings about the title character, Catherine of Aragon (Charlotte Hope), are inevitably colored by the events of The White Princess, in which the execution of Maggie’s younger brother was depicted as part of the deal that brought Catherine to England for a strategic royal marriage.

It doesn’t help that Catherine is marrying Prince Arthur (Angus Imrie), who was raised in the Pole household and who is closer to Maggie than he is to his own mother. Or that after Arthur’s death (spoiler alert), Maggie could be an obstacle to the princess’ ambition to become the wife of his brother, the future Henry VIII.

As I told Carmichael during an interview in February, I used to consider Edith one of the more put-upon characters on television.

“And now,” the actress said, laughing. “I know, I know. What is it about my face? They just want to torture me.”

‘Wrestling with bitterness’

Not exactly, said the producers.

“We had Rebecca Benson play Margaret Pole in The White Princess. We wanted someone who had that same sort of quiet strength, that same sort of ability to be, not exactly long-suffering," but to project humility, executive producer Emma Frost told me.

"But she’s also wrestling with bitterness,” executive producer Matthew Graham said.

It sounds like a familiar mix for Carmichael, Edith having exhibited her share of bitterness, though with less reason, perhaps, than her Spanish Princess character, who, in both history and this somewhat fictionalized retelling, seems to have led a challenging life.

“She has possibly the most interesting character trajectory" through the several Gregory series, Frost said, including another eight episodes she and Graham have written that they hope will be produced.

Maggie “really goes through it, and, I think, really does represent the difficult lives these people had in their high-powered political world,” Carmichael said. “Because that’s what it is, really, the proximity to the royal family and what it meant to be a York, even a York who’s married to a loyal Tudor. It still seems a threat” to the Tudors as Henry VII (Elliot Cowan, Da Vinci’s Demons) tries to shore up his dynasty.

"For Maggie, what’s important to her is keeping her family close, her children safe, her husband safe. Trying to keep out of politics, trying to not get involved in whatever is going on … and hold on to her family.”

No stranger to period costumes — after Downton, she appeared in the 1940s-set A United Kingdom — Carmichael was still struck by the sheer weight of the outfits worn in the 16th-century court depicted in The Spanish Princess.

“They were heavy. And the thing that astounded me … is that you were wearing this gigantically long dress that’s made of what feels like a carpet and then you’re wearing a cloak and then you’re wearing a travel cloak, and then you get on a horse!” she said.

“Extraordinary. But in that way, you would [travel] warm. Which would’ve been great if we hadn’t been having a heat wave at the time.”

The thing that she loved about Maggie and Edith is that viewers get to know “why someone behaves as they do,” Carmichael said. “And the gift with this writing and what Emma and Matthew do, and Julian [Fellowes, Downton’s creator] does, is that you know from the first scene the sense of a person and what they’ve endured, and how they have to live their life. And I think that comes from a lot of the hardship they’ve experienced.”

Return to ‘Downton’

Carmichael was predictably mum about any hardships Edith might experience in the Downton Abbey film, scheduled to open Sept. 20.

“They haven’t even prepped us on what to say,” she said.

As for the official, not very informative trailer released in December, "I was excited about it, because it’s the driveway that you know, and the castle that you know, and the music. But done from a helicopter,” Carmichael said.

She went almost directly from filming The Spanish Princess to the set of Downton Abbey.

“Completely different costumes, completely different world. It’s really interesting. You know, in Downton, I feel so surrounded by people who had this wealth of experience. It was like a schooling [experience] for me. And so it was really exciting to be [on] Spanish Princess with people who it was their first jobs. … I was like, ‘Oh, that was me, on the last thing I did.’”

Returning to Downton Abbey, though, was “dreamy,” she said.

“It was absolutely lovely. We’re so close. And for loads of reasons, like having this runaway success like that. Such a surprise,” and one that brought the cast closer. "There are only a handful of people who know what that felt like,” she said.

"Michelle [Dockery] and I talked about it a lot, the difference of going away and then coming back. … We’re looking at it coming out again, and that will be fun.”

Filming on the movie took from September to just before Christmas, less time than it took to make a season of the show, “but it’s lavish, luxurious,” Carmichael said, and includes the things “that I feel you love about Downton,” but on a grander scale.

“And we’ve got really exciting new cast members, which was heavenly. And for us, I think, the thing that was major was like seeing Jim [Carter, who plays Carson] put his costume on again … and all of our friends stepping into that world and feeling nostalgic,” she said.

“It feels like the show that we know, but done in a larger scale. I’m excited to see how it is received. We’re hoping that if, you know, you’ve never seen an episode, you’re going to know who these people are through watching this movie. But I know that it’s [also about] that feeling that I have, ‘That’s Jim! He’s Carson again!’"

The Spanish Princess. 8 p.m. Sunday, May 5, Starz.