‘Downton Abbey’ star thinks Season 7 would be ‘a reboot’ or ‘an origin story’

The rumoured revival of Downton Abbey could look very different to the show we know!

There’s been talk swirling for a while now about a possible seventh season.

“There is a plan which is in development,” claimed the Mail on Sunday last summer, with an insider telling them: “There is huge excitement around this project.”

The British tabloid newspaper – which it’s worth noting is not the most reliable of sources – reported that “casting taking place, and it would be great if all of the big stars can return.”

While we’re still waiting for an official announcement, it sounds like we should prepare ourselves to meet some fresh characters if Downton Abbey does return.

Original star Hugh Bonneville has revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that, if there is a new season, he believes it “would be a reboot… an origin story or something like that.”

A reboot would likely involve a time jump, moving the setting along a decade or two to explore the next generation of the Crawley family in the 1940s.

Might we get a mini-series flashing back to the adventures of the Dowager Countess in her youth instead? Or perhaps the story of how Robert and Cora got together?

“I mean, there’s clearly an appetite for these sorts of shows,” the Robert Crawley actor explained. “Bridgerton has been a magnificent success.”

“So if you can capture the younger generation to enjoy people in frocks, then go for it!”

“I know there’s a whole world of fandom that creates all the fictions of what happened before, or after and sideways from our stories,” Bonneville previously told Radio Times.

“But there’s only really one story creator and that is Julian Fellowes, so I don’t know where he would take his characters next or which aspect of these characters’ lives he’d like to explore,” he added.

Julian Fellowes wrote all six seasons of ITV’s award-winning period drama series, which ran from 2010 to 2015, as well as 2019’s movie and a sequel in 2022.

“[It’s] up to him, if indeed there are any more iterations to come,” Bonneville reiterated. “But I can see that there’s a whole world of renewed interest in this era, certainly in the last 10 years there’s been a revived interest in historical drama.”

“There are any number of avenues that could be explored,” he speculated.

Hugh Bonneville is about to start filming a second season of The Gold in England.

Inspired by the true story of the Brink’s-Mat robbery, the BBC’s 1980s heist thriller become one of the UK’s most watched new dramas of 2023.

The complete Downton Abbey collection is available on DVD on Amazon.