These are some new photos of Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary!) out last night in London. Isn’t she adorable? Whenever I see her out of her Downton Abbey costumes, I just think she looks so adorable and cute. Anyway, now that everyone knows how Downton Abbey’s Season 3 ended (SPOILER: Matthew Crawley is no longer alive), people are discussing the possibilities for Season 4, which is already in production. Just hours after the finale premiered on PBS in America, Julian Fellowes was already teasing the new season, not even giving us Yanks a chance to grieve for poor Mr. Crawley. Apparently, in Season 4, widowed single mum Lady Mary gets a new love interest!

When viewers saw Dan Stevens’ Matthew Crawley pass away at the end of Downton Abbey’s third series, heartfelt concern went out to his widow. However, Lady Mary, played by Michelle Dockery, is going to have a smile brought back to her face thanks to a new love interest.

The distressed single mother will be courted by a new man in the form of Miranda heartthrob Tom Ellis. The 34-year-old actor, who is married to Tamzin Outhwaite, had to audition for a role on the show but left producers very impressed with his portrayal of the new love interest.

According to the Daily Mirror, a source at ITV said that Tom’s legion of female admirers twinned with his acting ability is what won him the part. The source said: ‘He really showed his versatility, and he’s also incredibly popular with the female viewers.’

Welsh born Ellis is best known for his role as Gary Preston in BBC comedy Miranda, but this move to Downton could launch his career in the US. He will be hoping his character doesn’t face as grizzly an end as Dan Stevens’ did after he asked to released from the series for professional reasons. Downton creator Julian Fellowes hinted that Lady Mary and her newborn daughter will not be alone for long.

When speaking to the New York Times, Fellowes said: ‘We begin Series 4 six months later. We don’t have to do funerals and all that stuff. That’s all in the past by then.’

[From The Mail]

I tend to think that Fellowes is probably quite miffed with Dan Stevens for leaving the show in such a lurch, and maybe the payback will be that Lady Mary moves on from Mr. Crawley with relative ease. It just occurred to me – Lady Mary is sort of a Black Widow, isn’t she? Her first fiancé (her cousin) died on the Titanic, and then her first husband died in a car crash less than two years into the marriage. She’s cursed!!!

CB wanted me to talk about poor Lady Edith, who was horribly dumped at the altar in Season 3. Edith has become something of a fan-favorite, hasn’t she? First she became very useful during the war, then she stridently went after an older gentleman (only to be dumped at the altar), and now she’s a rising journalist/editorial writer, seemingly about to embark on an affair with a married man (whose wife is in some kind of asylum, which all sounds very Jane Eyre to me). I want Edith to find someone with potential, someone she could marry and start a family with. I want her personal life to have an upswing while Lady Mary’s personal life falters.

Oh, here’s Mary’s new love interest, the actor Tom Ellis. He’s sort-of attractive, but his eyes are weird, right?

Photos courtesy of WENN and Manuil Yamalyan/WENN.com.

Couldn’t you see it on Michelle Dockery’s face when Downton Abbey won Best Ensemble at the SAGs? Michelle looked relieved. She looked pleased. She didn’t look smug or full of herself. As much as we talk about the pushy American girls and their try-hards and angling for parts and attention, I swear… Michelle Dockery’s game is refreshing. She comes across as professional, interesting, grateful and incredibly… employable. I hope she successfully crosses over to films and whatever else she wants.

As for her dress – it’s vintage Ralph Rucci. She arrived on the carpet early enough to really work the dress for the cameras. It was a bold, interesting choice to wear vintage, and to wear something that was so exposed. I say that like Michelle was “pulling a Hathaway” or something, when really we just saw some side-boob and under-boob. I swear, even her underboob seems classy! Also: I think Michelle had probably the best example of a dark lipstick. She chose a burgundy-red and it looked great with her coloring.

Here’s Sally Field in J. Mendel. I get the feeling that Sally is genuinely content with her Oscar nomination and she’s not campaigning because she’s fine with Anne Hathaway getting the Oscar. That’s just what it feels like to me – Sally has “been there, done that” and seems to be rooting for Anne to have her moment. Sally is so very classy.

Rose Byrne in Valentino. Ladies, I just don’t even know. It’s not that I completely hate the dress or anything, I’m just not sure about it for the SAGs? And Rose has real problems with dressing appropriately for the occasion, and for misjudging the trends. Plus, the print just seems like 1970s wallpaper.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.

I feel like I’m the only sticking with Downton Abbey these days, although I know that’s not true. Downton Abbey’s Season 3 airing on PBS is scoring huge numbers, although there’s still so much criticism about the series. Oddly enough, I’m about to compare Downton to Lena Dunham’s Girls: if you don’t like it, don’t watch it, but just try to accept the show for what it is. Downton is a soap opera with some ridiculous plot lines and fabulous costumes and Edwardian lust. It is what it is. Anyway, following Dan Stevens’ (SPOILER!) exit from the series at the end of Season 3, many fans are worried that Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) is going to be leaving soon too. The Mail has a new, exhaustive piece about Michelle’s efforts to make the leap across the pond. Some highlights from the piece:

Her gleaming emeralds were Bulgari, her spectacular dress was designed by Alexandre Vauthier and she had a team of Hollywood’s finest working on every aspect of her style. It’s a long way from Downton Abbey — and, indeed, from her childhood hometown of Romford — but as Michelle Dockery worked the red carpet at this week’s Golden Globes, she looked ready to leave her character of Lady Mary Crawley far behind.

So who was behind her transformation and why did Dockery make such a big deal of her nomination for a Globe? She didn’t win — indeed, she was always unlikely to against Homeland’s Claire Danes. The answer is that this is Dockery’s big moment to make the leap from domestic television star to Hollywood player. Much time and effort is being invested by some of the industry’s biggest players into turning her into a bona fide Hollywood glamour girl. Team Dockery is, by all accounts, becoming a rather formidable machine.

And although she is committed to appearing in the fourth series of Downton — which will be filmed from February to July this year — you would have to be a brave punter to bet on her hanging around after that. For it turns out that, just like her former co-star Dan Stevens before her, Dockery, 31, has started to pave the way for an exit. And her new super-groomed look is just the beginning of her grand plan.

First, that dress. Worth nearly £4,000, it secured her a place on the prestigious Harper’s Bazaar Top Ten best-dressed list and was secured for her by her new stylist, Micaela Erlanger, who is based in New York. Erlanger is a big acquisition for Dockery. One of the most influential stylists around, she doesn’t come cheap — her services for an event like this are said to cost about £10,000. In this instance, Erlanger notified the designer a fortnight before the event what Dockery wanted, and then secured the loan of the dress, plus the hire of the suite of jewellery (worth £300,000) to go with it.

Dockery’s soft, wavy hair-do was done by Mara Roszak, and her dewy make-up by Jordan Bree Long, both well-regarded professionals. In all, given the costs of hiring such a team, plus their expenses, the final figure for her big night make-over is likely to have crested £25,000. Erlanger was overheard crowing that she had wanted to ‘kick it up a notch’ for her client, which she certainly did.

As well as this glossy posse, Dockery has hired some serious backroom wheeler-dealers. She acquired the services of Sandra Chang, a well-known talent agent in Hollywood, who is looking after her interests out there. Ms Chang also polishes the prospects of Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger Games, and Sam Worthington of Avatar — two of the hottest young talents in town. It’s said that Chang’s firm, Anonymous Content, footed the bill for Dockery’s Globes’ makeover. Under Chang’s patronage, Dockery has started to put out feelers for a new acting career in films, which would make even her global success as Lady Mary — Downton is watched as far afield as Hungary, Argentina and New Zealand — look like small fry. When asked if she is leaving Downton, her PR handler at Milk Publicity, Jessica Morris, will only say: ‘We do not comment on or discuss individual artist’s contracts.’

But it’s clear the momentum is heading in one way only. Dockery has just finished filming a movie with Liam Neeson called Non-Stop. It’s a big budget commercial blockbuster, with a budget of £31 million, and she is the second lead after Tinseltown stalwart Julianne Moore. The producer is Joel Silver, of The Matrix, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard fame.

Leo Barraclough of the screen bible Variety tells me: ‘Non-Stop is a good big-budget action film and Liam Neeson has a history of doing these things very well and then they turn into franchises like Taken, which would be fantastic for Michelle Dockery without a doubt. It’s a very good movie for her. It looks as if she is on the brink of making the cross-over. This is no surprise because Downton is a big deal in America and is especially influential in Hollywood. This means that the cast, like Michelle, are becoming desirable to casting directors. The fact that she has been nominated for both a Screen Actors Guild award and a Golden Globe is significant. People take notice of it and it very much matters.’

I’m told that in recent weeks Dockery has auditioned for several high-profile films, among them one titled Foxcatcher, which she lost out on to Sienna Miller. She is also said to have auditioned for an adaptation of the Sondheim musical Into The Woods, which James Corden is pencilled in to star in. She was narrowly pipped to the role of Cinderella by actress Anna Kendrick, best known for Up In The Air, for which she was Oscar-nominated. Such is the buzz around Dockery that she has even entered the frame as a possible contender to appear opposite Johnny Depp in the remake of the Thirties detective classic, The Thin Man.

And you can see from her media profile, which now includes a photoshoot in this month’s In Style magazine, an interview in Vanity Fair and another shoot in Harper’s Bazaar, that she is starting to make genuine inroads into the Hollywood showbusiness scene.

[From The Mail]

I think part of the tone here is that particularly British class thing, where they seem to make fun of middle-class (or lower-class) people for being ambitious or thinking “above than their station.” I’m thrilled that Dockery is quietly plotting her exit strategy and lining up meetings and seeing what her options are. I think she sounds like a really smart, ambitious woman who is determined to make the most out of the success she’s had. Of course, I feel that way because I think Michelle is actually a talented actress – I would feel differently if she was just trying to “happen” in Hollywood with just a pretty face and no talent.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Lady Mary!! These are some lovely new photos of Michelle Dockery, otherwise known as “OMG, Lady Mary from Downton Abbey.” Dockery posed for Harper’s Bazaar, the September issue. You might remember that Dockery also shared the cover of Vanity Fair several months ago too. She’s got a good publicist, and I wouldn’t mind at all if Dockery had some break-out success now. Lady Mary is the oldest daughter, the daughter who changed the most during the war, the daughter who was prepared to watch her love marry another… until “another” died suddenly and ridiculously. Now, as it stands for Season 3 (whenever it will air, who knows?), Lady Mary and Cousin Matthew are finally together, finally engaged. Don’t worry… I’m sure there will be much more drama.

Incidentally, I’m really proud of the fact that I got CB hooked on Downton Abbey. It’s an easy sell, though, so I guess I shouldn’t take all the credit. You come into Downton thinking that you’re going to be watching some high-minded costume drama in which the main event will be a snappy quip at a formal dinner, and then Downton’s completely over-the-top soapy drama pulls you in. And let’s face it: it is TOTALLY a soap opera. You can pretend it’s fancy and that you are fancy for watching it, but I’ve made my peace with Downton’s ridiculous plot twists and crazy drama. In this Bazaar piece, it sounds like Dockery has made her peace with it too. Here are some highlights:

Drinking in character: She sips a glass of red wine and muses on the endless imbibing of the aristocratic Crawley family. “Sometimes during filming I’ll think, No, I’m not going to have a brandy because I just finished my glass of wine at the table.” After all, how is Mary supposed to be imperious when she’s inebriated? “Exactly!”

What does Dockery have in common with Lady Mary? She does have a superb speaking voice (originally from Essex, she credits drama school at 19 for “poshing you up quick”) and posture that would make a mother proud. But that’s about it. The most Lady Mary thing Dockery has done to date is wear a fascinator to the Epsom Derby last year. “They are not fascinating,” she observes of the first, and likely last, time she will ever wear one. Today she’s in the cool-girl off-duty uniform: a navy-and-white-striped T-shirt and jeans, her hair still in slight kinks from a marcel wave. (It’s now 1920 at Downton.)

She is often asked why she believes Downton is so celebrated, especially in the U.S. “I think some period drama can be quite alienating, but Downton isn’t,” she says. “This is going to sound quite, um, pretentious, but someone said that it’s like a soap written by a poet.” She’s right. The writing, by Gosford Park scribe Julian Fellowes, and the cinematography are so elegant that Downton’s campier qualities (the dreamy Turk dying in flagrante delicto, the noble valet Bates in jail for murder, Lady Sybil running off with the chauffeur) wash right over you. “I used to get quite defensive of people saying it’s soaplike,” she says, “but it kind of is.”

Oh, the third season will air in America in January! She is finishing Downton’s third season, which will premiere in the U.S. in January. Before that, Dockery will appear on the big screen in Anna Karenina, with Keira Knightley, in November, and in the fall she begins filming Restless, a TV adaptation of the William Boyd novel, with Charlotte Rampling playing her mother. Set in the ’40s and the ’70s, it’s positively contemporary compared with the rest of her résumé.

What if Lady Mary were alive today? “She’d be in charge, her own boss. She’d have married very well and maybe had kids, but I don’t think she’d be particularly maternal.” She laughs. “She’d definitely have help.” As for modern Mary’s style: “Armani. Simple, clean.”

Her own style, and working with Ralph Lauren: She’s a fan of actress Charlotte Gainsbourg’s boyish aesthetic. “Very French, understated. That’s the kind of style I go for.” In May, Dockery wore Ralph Lauren to the Costume Institute Gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, where she was the designer’s guest. “I loved it,” she says. “It was the first dress I tried on.” Lauren’s Fall 2012 collection was also inspired by Downton, down to playing its soundtrack during his show. “It’s amazing, really, how it has affected fashion.” Of course, she wears gorgeous dresses on Downton too, and she’s grateful that the passage of time has freed the Crawley girls from their corsets. But it’s the hairstyles that take the longest—about an hour to get the marcel wave just right. The makeup needs only 20 minutes because, sadly, a lady didn’t wear mascara then.

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

She sounds like a cool woman. I have to admit… soap opera or not, I liked the evolution of Lady Mary within Season 1 AND 2. She became her own woman, and she became a genuinely GOOD woman in Season 2. I have so many questions about what Season 3 will bring. Will Matthew and Mary have premarital sex? We already know that Mary is a wanton woman who gave it up for the Turk. So will Matthew try to get some before they walk down the aisle? And will Mary and Matthew make it down the aisle? Will Shirley MacLaine mess up the whole wedding plan? Will Matthew still feel all tingly down below? Will the good doctor still be completely awful and continue to misdiagnosis everyone? Will Lady Sybil come back? And seriously, will there be a sex scene between Matthew and Mary? I need to see them shag.

Photos courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar.

I heard rumors about this cover back in February, and now we’re finally seeing it – Vanity Fair’s cover story on “The Women of Television”. Featuring a cover with Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife), Sofia Vergara (Modern Family), Claire Danes (Homeland) and Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary Crawford on Downton Abbey). I’m happy to say that I watch all of the TV shows represented on this cover. Unfortunately, for the inside pictorial, the Vanity Fair editors seemed to only prioritize boobs, not quality talent. Here’s another photo, featuring Emily Deschanel (Bones), Grace Park (Hawaii 5-0), Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife), Emmy Rossum (Shameless), Emily Van Camp (Revenge), Kerry Washington (Scandal), and Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls). I’m telling you… all young, all booby.

Not, of course it’s nice to see diversity in at least ONE photo from Vanity Fair – even though they only managed three white women and one Latina woman for the cover. But inside, there’s an Indian woman, an African-American woman and a Korean-American woman. So… that’s nice. But it’s still incredibly ageist (I think Margulies is the oldest woman featured), and slightly out of touch. One of the biggest hits of the year is The New Girl – so where’s Zooey Deschanel? Where are any of the ladies from Mad Men? Or Game of Thrones? Or Mireille Enos from The Killing? Edie Falco? Laura Dern? Laura Linney? Glenn Close from Damages? Or Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter? Or Kyra Sedgwick from The Closer, arguably one of the best female characters on television? I could go on and on about the ladies that were left out.

Still… I guess I should be happy that Vanity Fair is doing such a gyno-centric television issue, right? And I should be happy that there are so many good parts for women in television these days. But the cause is not helped by just shoving random, young, scantily-clad ladies into a room, you know?

Photos courtesy of Vanity Fair.

Last night, PBS aired the last episode of season 2 of Downton Abbey. The series – about the aristocratic Crawley family before, during and after World War I, is pretty awesome, and if you’re not watching it by now… well, you should skip this post. Last year, Downton was a quiet, gorgeous, beloved miniseries which took the UK by storm, and found footing here in America too. By the time the second season aired in the UK, the Brits were Downton-crazy, and the popularity has definitely increased over here, with mixed results. Some critics say that Downton has turned into a total soap opera – they’re not wrong. While the first season kept its aristocratic bearings and stayed true to the Upstairs/Downstairs vibe, when the second season came – and with it, the tides of war – everything changed. The characters grew, some becoming worse, some becoming better. The aristocracy is crumbling, the fashions are changing, and the class lines are beginning to blur.

Anyway, we’ve had some requests for stories about Downton, so here you go. I liked the second season for the most part, with two notable exceptions. First, the Bates/Anna story line got really, really ridiculous and I simply don’t care about Bates anymore. Secondly, the whole thing with the little ginger maid who got knocked up out of wedlock? That got super-boring too. But I loved everything about the sisters – Lady Sybil is my favorite, and I like her independence and her easy beauty. But I found myself loving the changes to Lady Mary and Lady Edith too – they both became BETTER women during the war.

Lady Mary – or actress Michelle Dockery – is getting a lot of attention lately. I’ve seen a lot of photos of her during London Fashion Week, she was just in America solo to promote the series, and now The Mail reports that Dockery/Lady Mary might be getting a Vanity Fair cover. I kind of don’t want her to be singled out – if VF wants to recognize Downton, they should put Michelle Dockery with Dan Stevens (Matthew Crawley!). And the Earl of Grantham!! And CORA!!

Michelle Dockery, who plays Downton’s Lady Mary, is set for superstardom in America. The 30-year-old will appear on the cover of May’s Vanity Fair magazine, I can reveal.

‘It’s the big TV issue and Michelle will share the front page with American actresses Claire Danes and Sofia Vergara,’ says my mole.

‘She’s so excited, she says she won’t believe it until she has a copy in her hands.

‘Michelle has turned down request after request from US magazines after Vanity Fair told her they see it as her official US “coming out” moment.’

[From The Mail]

Michelle with Claire Danes and Sofia Vergara? Okay, that sounds good too. That will be an amazing cover! Sidenote: I love Claire Danes on Homeland. She is AWESOME.

What else would you like me to talk about? Livinia and the Spanish flu? That episode was crazy. Edith and fake Patrick the burn victim? Sybil and the Irishman? I’m trying not to make this too spoiler-y because some of you just haven’t finished watching so far. But didn’t you love the way season 2 ended? Was it worth it?

PS… Dan Stevens: would you hit it? I would. I LOVE him. When he was getting tingly in his pants, I was all “OH YES!!!!” Plus, he’s a lovely dancer.

Photos courtesy of WENN.