‘Downton Abbey’ season 4: Julian Fellows, Joanne Froggatt defend controversial scene
Of course, we start this “Downton Abbey” season 4 article out with a substantial warning: If you want to avoid any and all spoilers for season 4, don’t read any further.
Ever since the show aired a new episode on Sunday night that featured a very dark moment, as we ended up witnessing the shocking rape of Anna by Mr. Green, both Twitter and fans have shown all sorts of outrage over the fact that something so disturbing was shown on television. While there was a warning at the start of the episode that there were some violent scenes ahead, hundreds of complaints still came in from viewers. It’s like we said in the initial review for the episode: What viewers appreciate about the show is the mixture of reality and idealized fantasy; when something dark and born out of reality takes place, that is what tends to get the fans rallying against the people behind making the show.
But now, some associated with the show are trying to explain themselves. While creator Julian Fellowes apologized to the BBC to anyone who was traumatized watching the episode, he also reiterated that it was done in a way to not show everything that happened, or to be gratuitous:
“The whole point of the way we do things on Downton is we don’t do them gratuitously. We are interested in exploring the resultant emotions and the effect these things have on people.”
Meanwhile, Joanne Froggatt, the actor playing the part of victim in the scene, told BBC’s “Breakfast” that she appreciated the way in which the scene was written, and did not feel in shooting it that the moment was was meant to exploit her character or the situation.
This is not a scene that will disappear from memory for some time. Thanks to what we saw at the end of the episode with Anna not telling Bates the truth about what happened, we’re going to see the tension between the two parties eventually start to come to a boil.
While not giving anything else away on this story, you can read more at this link about the future of the show.
Photo: ITV