Tragic Details That Will Always Haunt The Downton Abbey Cast

"Downton Abbey" is British television at its finest. Set at the palatial Highclere Castle in Newbury, England, the show follows the residents of this grand old estate through the turbulence of the early 20th century. Over the course of six seasons, five Christmas specials, and three movies, viewers watch as the old rules governing the British aristocracy slowly fall apart. As a result, all the characters — from valets to maids to the titled aristocrats residing at the house — must reinvent themselves and move into a new era. Oftentimes, tragedy mars this transition, as characters suffer grave accidents, medical emergencies, and violent attacks.

But, if the tragedies shown on-screen were shocking, they were no more surprising than the ones suffered by the "Downton Abbey" cast in real life. Indeed, many of the actors from the show have experienced the same challenges and losses that they portray on-screen. The car accident that we saw in the show's most horrifying Christmas special mirrored a wreck that killed Laura Carmichael's close friends. If the character Lady Sybil struggled with reproductive health issues, so did Jessica Brown Findlay. The sexual assault that Joanne Froggatt enacted shed light on the experience of other women in the broader "Downton Abbey" community. Ultimately, it seems that tragedy has enshrouded the show's team, meaning its members are no strangers to grief, mourning, and sorrow. 

If "Downton Abbey's" Mr. Carson character is especially beloved, that's no thanks to actor Jim Carter. Throughout his relationship with the franchise, Carter brought an air of simultaneous seriousness and tenderness to Mr. Carson, making him one of the most believable characters on the show. His efforts helped him secure two Emmy nominations for his contribution to "Downton Abbey." But, tragically, Carter's life has not all been fame and celebration.

When Carter was still a teenager, his father died suddenly. "My dad's death was a shock. It came out of the blue," the actor told Your Later Life. "I was 16, my sister was 11, my brother was 19. It affected us all differently." The event was made particularly traumatic by the way Carter's community dealt with the death. Apparently, people viewed it as a taboo subject that was not to be discussed publicly. "We didn't talk about it and my sister wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. I think the thinking was that she would be saved from a trauma, but, actually, it has caused a lot of problems," Carter confessed. 

Ultimately, this experience motivated Carter to change the way people talk about death. These days, the television star tries to speak openly about the topic and encourages others to do the same. "I think it really helps if you can talk about it and prepare," he added in the same interview.  

Most "Downton Abbey" fans know Laura Carmichael as the spunky Lady Edith. Describing the character in a conversation with The Telegraph, Carmichael gushed about Edith's depth. "She can drive, she took a job in the war, she's a single mother and a woman publisher in a man's world: all in all a thoroughly modern role model," Carmichael gushed. That being said, there was more to playing Edith than just interpreting a trail-blazing 20th century woman. In Season 3, Edith's sister, Lady Sybil, died of eclampsia — thrusting her into the depths of despair. And, if Carmichael seemed to understand her character's loss with an uncanny level of emotion, that's because she was mourning a loss of her own.

"After I graduated and was in a state of despair about getting an acting job, two of my friends died in an accident. It was so shocking — devastating — and really put life into perspective," Carmichael revealed in the same interview. Apparently, her feelings of grief follow her wherever she goes. "I think of them every day," she later added. Because of this tragic experience, the actor cries real tears when she interprets Edith's experience of mourning on television. "Whenever Edith and Mary talk about their dead sister Sybil, tears always come unbidden to my eyes," she said. The fact that Carmichael also has a sister in real life just accentuates that dynamic even further.

Elizabeth McGovern played "Downton Abbey's" Lady Cora, an American woman who moved to Great Britain as a sort of dollar bride. Although McGovern occasionally mourned the limits of Cora's role, she felt that these were right given the constraints of her era. "I wish at times she could have had more interesting stories," she admitted in an interview with The Guardian, but added that it wouldn't have made sense for her to wield "any more political or social power, because it just wouldn't be accurate to the time."

Like Cora's character, who was deeply impacted by historical context, McGovern's career was influenced by the sexist realities of 20th-century Hollywood. In the same interview, McGovern confessed that acting roles available to women in the past were extremely objectifying. "I knew my job early on was to fulfill a man's fantasy of the woman they wanted. It never occurred to me to even question it," she said.

Sadly, McGovern went on to explain that it wasn't just her on-screen presence that felt highly objectifying. Her all-around existence fell into this dynamic due, in part, to the downsides of living life in the spotlight. "The price you pay for fame is that it becomes really hard to have any relationships of intimacy, because you are collateral. Your whole being has sort of been sold, and that creates a tension about what people want from you," she revealed.

Brendan Coyle was part of some of the most unforgettable "Downton Abbey" scenes, no thanks to his character, the valet, John Bates. In the television series, Bates is in love with Joanne Froggatt's character, Anna, and the pair make for one of the best couples on the show. Sadly, however, Coyle's real-life story lacks the butterflies and roses that we see in parts of his on-screen role. In fact, he comes from a difficult background that was characterized by feelings of isolation. "I never felt like I belonged where I came from," Coyle revealed in a chat with E! News. "I worked at my dad's butcher shop from a young age and after I started school, I went to a meat factory and did all that. It's really weird, because I hated it at the time. I just wasn't cut out for it."

Then things took a turn for the worse for Coyle when his father suddenly died. The actor was just 17 at the time, but the sudden loss motivated him to think about what he really wanted out of life. "It's a bit weird. It's an awful thing to say that the death of my father was the catalyst for me to get out of town and move on, but it was," Coyle admitted in the same conversation. He tried his hand as an actor and found a place in the industry. The rest is history.

The truth about "Downton Abbey" is that the show's success boiled down to the talent of its actors, and Jessica Brown Findlay is no exception. In her role as Lady Sybil Crawley, Brown Findlay portrayed a happily married woman going through the excitement of pregnancy and the stress of starting a family. Ultimately, the character succumbs to eclampsia, a complication of childbirth in a heart-wrenching scene that Brown Findlay mastered perfectly.

Interestingly, Brown Findlay is no stranger to the joys and tragedies associated with pregnancy and birth. As the mother of twins who were conceived via IVF, the actor knows how wonderful family life can be. However, before the 2022 birth of her twins, Brown Findlay suffered a series of miscarriages. Opening up about this on the "Happy Mum, Happy Baby" podcast, she explained, "Well, before the boys were born, I had three [miscarriages]. I had two with conceiving unaided and one chemical miscarriage that happened with IVF that we knew was going to happen because the bloods had come back with really low numbers." 

After her sons were born, Brown Findlay had another miscarriage, resulting in feelings of dread and despair. She and her husband had been hopeful about the pregnancy, and the fact that it resulted in a loss broke her heart. "I was obviously devastated," she shared in the same interview.

"Downton Abbey" would not have been the same show without the iconic Dame Maggie Smith. In her role as the witty Violet Crawley, Smith delivered a series of unforgettable zingers that brought humor to the screen. But decades before "Downton Abbey" was even a dream, Smith lived a number of challenging experiences — none perhaps as tricky as her first marriage to actor, Robert Stephens.

Back when Maggie Smith was young (and as gorgeous as ever), she walked down the aisle with Stephens in hope of stability. To Smith's surprise, however, her new partner offered her anything but. Stephens was an alcoholic and his daily dependency on alcohol affected Smith and their marriage. In a later interview with The Guardian, Smith said that she didn't notice anything was amiss for the first year of their marriage. However, as time went on, the signs only grew more telling. "We had two little boys. He didn't understand. I sure as hell didn't understand. It got worse and then it went on getting worse and worse. In the end it was destroying everybody," she said.

Making matters even worse, Stephens apparently cheated on Smith over and over again. She encouraged him to seek help but he was dealing with numerous other challenges that made the relationship untenable. One doctor even noted that Stephens experienced "violent moods swings and indiscriminate sexual activity." These issues ultimately led to the demise of the marriage and the pair divorced in 1975.

It's no secret that Robert James-Collier is a fantastic actor. During his tenure at "Downton Abbey," he made a serious mark in his portrayal of the footman, Thomas Barrow. Thomas was an extremely complex character who stood out for marrying routine dishonesty with a dash of loneliness. The character is also gay, leading to a number of story arches about his sexuality, which would have been a cause of active persecution in early 20th-century England.

Sadly, though, James-Collier's incredible performance was not necessarily well-received in Hollywood. Instead, big filmmakers and famous directors stereotyped the actor as someone who could only play the part of a gay man. Their reason? He had played one on one TV show. Addressing this issue on Radio Times, James-Collier reflected, "I think audiences in the U.S. can identify quite easily with the quintessential English gent and English lady whereas a neurotic, dark, gay character like Thomas is a hard thing to put into the American market. It can lead to typecasting."

Complicating issues even more, the actor said that it was hard for him to find opportunities to play straight characters. "Because Thomas Barrow is gay and is, essentially, the bad guy for much of the show, a lot of people within the industry can only see you as that," James-Collier added in the same interview. Thus, stereotypes slowed down his career.

Lily James has transformed completely since she first played the part of Lady Rose on "Downton Abbey." Back in those early days, she battled with a lot of imposter syndrome. She also had a hard time taking on emotionally charged scenes, particularly those related to death. The reason for her struggles, apparently, boiled down to sorrow-filled personal memories — most specifically the death of her father.

Opening up about this loss to The Telegraph, James described how her father died of cancer at the age of 54. At the time, it was difficult for James to come to terms with the loss. As she put it in the interview, "There was so much life in him. He was brilliant." Making matters even more painful, James' dad passed away around the time that several other family members also died. "A lot of my family died in the space of five years, but I am glad that my grandma died before my dad, because if she had seen that ... it was like our whole family was suddenly ..." James explained without ending her sentence.

The pain of these losses ultimately made it hard for James to access the feelings of sadness that she needed to fuel certain scenes. "I couldn't really go there. Sometimes there was coldness to me around that," she admitted. Eventually, the actor broke through her own boundaries — but it was not without a lot of deep emotional work.

Some "Downton Abbey" tragedies surround just one actor. Others involve the show's entire community. Such was the case when Joanne Froggatt took on a particularly emotional on-screen challenge — that of portraying her character, Anna's, sexual assault by a predatory valet. The scene was heart-wrenchingly difficult to watch, yet it shed a light on a particularly important issue. What's more, Froggatt's portrayal of Anna encouraged "Downton Abbey" viewers to open up about their own experiences of rape and sexual assault. As Froggatt would later tell The Telegraph, "I actually received a few letters from survivors of sexual assault after Anna's rape aired, all of which said that they either didn't feel they would be believed, or hadn't been."

Learning that so many members of the "Downton Abbey" fan community had endured sexual violence was not easy for Froggatt. As she understood more about this tragedy, she grew increasingly concerned about the alarming statistics surrounding sexual assault — many of which indicate that the crime is not always taken seriously by the police. Around the time that her scene aired, only 1.7% of rapes reported in the United Kingdom resulted in a summons or a charge. Referencing this number, Froggatt told The Telegraph that the country seemed stuck back in Anna's era. "That time hasn't changed anything in that regard is so shocking," she said.

Michelle Dockery is arguably one of the most famous cast members from "Downton Abbey." In her role as Lady Mary, Dockery displayed an incredible range of emotion, especially when her character's husband, Matthew Crawley, died in a car crash. Mary losing Matthew was fiction, but Dockery's real life was not so dissimilar.

Indeed, around the time Mary was coping as a widow, the Downton Abbey actor's real-life partner, John Dineen, was gravely ill with cancer and was not expected to survive. "One of the difficult things at the time was the parallels with Mary. It was just baffling, and still is to me, that my character's storyline was so similar," she told The Guardian. In 2015, Dineen died. 

Dockery was devastated. Although she and Dineen never had the chance to celebrate their wedding, Dockery felt it easy to relate to roles featuring widows. "Oh, I refer to myself as a widow, yes. We were engaged, and married at heart, and so I do consider myself a widow. It's why I related to Alice so much," she added, referencing the character she played in the Netflix mini series "Godless." Dockery's portrayal of Alice was so excellent that she was nominated for an Emmy, but that only goes to show how much grief she carries with her. "I don't have the vocabulary to describe what it felt like. And what it still feels like," she revealed in the same interview.

In 2024, tragedy struck the entire acting community when "Downton Abbey" star Dame Maggie Smith died at 89. Described by King Charles III as a "national treasure" (via the BBC), Smith was known for her go-getter attitude. Less than a year before she died, Smith modeled for Loewe. Her final film, "The Miracle Club," hit theaters in 2023 when she was 87 years old. Smith's death left many of her co-stars with a gaping hole in their hearts. At the time of her passing, Michelle Dockery fondly told People, "There was no one quite like Maggie. I feel tremendously lucky to have known such a maverick. She will be deeply missed and my thoughts are with her family."

Joanne Froggatt also shared words of mourning upon receiving the tragic news. Writing on Instagram, Froggatt expressed her admiration for a colleague that she came to hold dear. "She truly was a trailblazer, with the sharpest wit, the greatest talent, the naughtiest sense of humour, she was a force to be reckoned with ... and underneath all of that a huge heart," Froggatt wrote.

During the filming of "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale," cast members apparently thought of Smith quite a bit. "Everything she represents is there. She's in every room, in every interaction, so it's not like she's not there [in the movie]. It's a weird thing," Elizabeth McGovern told The Guardian.