Allen Leech and Laura Carmichael Told Us All About Their ‘Downton Abbey’ Arcs

Downton Abbey has been in our hearts since the fall of 2010. For someone like me, the show has been with me through college all the way to my 30s, now, where I still care about the Crawley family and the lives of characters like Lady Mary, Lady Edith, Tom Branson, and all of their partners.

So with a movie like Downton Abbey: A New Era, it is a fun and fascinating look into the journey that these characters have been on for six seasons and now two movies. And talking with stars Allen Leech (who plays Tom Branson) and Laura Carmichael (who plays Lady Edith Hexham), it’s clear that the two love coming back to their roles in the larger Downton Abbey universe.

With so many characters to care about, it might seem hard for one movie to give us updates on everyone we loved through the show’s six-season run on PBS, and yet still, we got to see plenty of characters we know and care for in A New Era.

What’s happening with Tom and Lady Edith?

The last we saw of Tom Branson, he had found a new love after spending years missing his wife Lady Sybil. The movie kicks off with Branson’s wedding to Lucy (Tuppence Middleton), but at the wedding, his best friend and business partner, Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode), is nowhere to be found. Jokingly, I asked Leech what Tom was thinking when his best friend wasn’t there.

“I think it’s, for Tom, he’s like ‘Nostalgia doesn’t matter, profit does. Go make some money for our company,'” Leech joked, and it is a great example of how much the cast knows their characters and their reactions to things. The movie also continues a great storyline: Happiness for Lady Edith. Throughout most of the series, Lady Edith was a character who was constantly mocked by her sister, Lady Mary, and was never one to finally get what she wanted. But we saw her embrace her daughter that she had out of wedlock, and she found her own husband in Bertie Hexham (Harry Hadden-Paton).

But Laura Carmichael, when I asked what she’d like to see happen for Lady Edith now that she’s happy in her life, shared that she missed “boss” Edith: “I want to see more boss Edith. I really enjoyed her in her editor role. So, I think a bit more newspaper stuff. Hiring and firing and being the big bad boss.”

You can see our whole conversation here:

Downton Abbey: A New Era hits theaters on May 20th.

(featured image: PBS)