‘Downton Abbey’ season 4 spoilers: About this Diddy ‘casting’ news…

In the wake of obnoxious publicity stunts, this has to be somewhere high on the list: The notion of rapper / producer / jack-of-all-trades Diddy suddenly deciding to join the cast of “Downton Abbey” for the show’s fourth season.

Basically, Diddy started and perpetuated this rumor himself, courtesy of a series of posts on Twitter suggesting that he is going to be a “series regular” on the ITV drama moving forward. He also teased a “photo” on Instagram, and suggested that he would be releasing more details at around 3:00 a.m. Eastern time.

Big news, right? Well, let’s take a step back for a minute on this. Diddy may claim that this is his favorite show, and he possesses an impressive knowledge of the series lingo, but this does not a star on “Downton Abbey” make. For one, the show has been filming for months now, and wouldn’t a series regular have been spotted around at one point? Plus, this show is not the sort to rely on mega star guest-casting for anything. They don’t need it, since they are strong enough as is to have a good show without big names on board.

Finally, there is one other tiny little problem with Diddy’s claim: Both ITV and PBS have already denied it, saying that it is not happening. So why would the man put out intentionally-false information? The best way to look at this is that Diddy knows the way in which the press works, and that they would lap up something like this. He’s probably promoting something that does have sort sort of commonality with the show, and linking himself to it is an easy way to get press.

Do you want to know when we are going to see “Downton Abbey” come back on in America? PBS has an official announcement, and you can check that out over here.

Photo: ITV