‘Downton Abbey’ season 6, episode 5 preview; plus, Maggie Smith comments

Sunday night’s new episode of “Downton Abbey” has quite a bit of important story to resolve. It has to tell you whether or not Edith and Mary are making big steps forward in their personal lives, just as it also must tell you how some of the employees of the Abbey are preparing to move forward into a new era. We’re no longer in the world where someone needs a billion under-butlers, and people can so much easier care for themselves.

Many of the actors are preparing to also move on after the end of the show, and clearly Maggie Smith is one of them. There have been rumors for years now that the iconic actress was ready to move on from playing the Dowager Countess Violet, but she stuck with it for as long as it was on. In a new interview now with the Telegraph, she makes it clear that she was prepared to go on and do some other things for a while:

“I was ready for it to finish … I began to wonder whether I had the energy levels to carry on. Then there was the dressing up in all the corsets and the hats. It’s a long process.”

We don’t believe that Smith is anywhere close to retiring; however, she may be ready at this point to just move forward and try out some different stuff for a while, stuff that does not require such a lengthy commitment or so much preparation week in and week out.

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