Interview: Dan Stevens of "Downton Abbey"

Trendy. Hip. Water cooler fodder. Those aren’t words usually used when discussing programming from that most staid of networks – PBS. But those are exactly the sort of sentiments the network is hearing about itself these days thanks to the second season of Downton Abbey, currently airing Sunday nights on PBS.

In the era of The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and American Horror Story that a show set in 1914 following the lives of the wealthy people who live on an English estate with the servants who pamper them, should become an international hit is … remarkable. Downton Abbey features no graphic violence, nudity or sex. It is not laden with special effects or outrageous antics by a character in a black rubber suit. Instead, it’s simply features great storytelling, the beautiful English countryside, and, of course, terrific acting from actors such as Maggie Smith, Elizabeth McGovern and Hugh Bonneville.

Of particular note for the readers of AfterElton.com is Dan Stevens who portrays Matthew Crawley, the young lawyer who suddenly finds himself first in line to become the Earl of Grantham and the head of Downton Abbey. While Stevens doesn’t portray a gay character in the show (that falls to Rob James-Collier who plays Thomas the footman), the 29-year-old Brit has played gay before, most notably as Nick Guest, the erstwhile hero of the TV adaptation of Allan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty in 2006.

AfterElton sat down with Stevens at last summer’s Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles to discuss the surprising success of Downton Abbey, playing gay, and those comparisons to Hugh Grant.

AfterElton: Thanks for talking with us, Dan. We’ve been fans of yours for a long time now.
Dan Stevens: That’s very sweet. [I know you first wrote about me] around The Line of Beauty time. I think you’re the only people in this country who paid any attention to that show.

AE: That’s unfortunate.
DS: It’s a shame. Well, we all know the reasons why certain networks didn’t pick it up. But maybe now, I don’t know.

AE: Fortunately, it’s a very different world from five years ago in many respects.
DS: I think it is with all the recent developments in New York [the passage of same-sex marriage], which is all very good to hear. Yes, I’m still hanging out for a widespread U.S distribution of The Line of Beauty. Maybe one day.

Dan Stevens (center) in The Line of Beauty

AE: On the other hand, we’re here to talk about something that is an amazing success. By the way, it was my readers who first told me about Downton Abbey and insisted I had to start watching.
DS: Thanks to your readers. That’s great to hear. It had been sort of one of those word of mouth shows, I think. We had some terrific publicity to get the ball rolling. But it was a show that people very quickly took into their homes and their hearts. And whole families sat around and enjoyed it. And I’ve known people as young as four to ninety-four who’ve loved it.

AE: What do you think accounts for that?
DS: I think it’s sort of a freak magical combination of a lot of elements. First and foremost, they’re terrific scripts and really great stories — very cleverly structured, some great characters, and some kind of classic characters — sort of recognizable archetypal characters. We’ve got sort of villains and a sort of grand dowager and there’s the outsider who’s sort of the insurgent middle class character critiquing the whole set up which, I guess, I represent. There’s the classic sort of Upstairs, Downstairs divide and the class system thing which certainly in England we still seem to be pretty obsessed with.

AE: We’re obsessed with it here too.
DS: I think, yeah, in different ways that’s certainly true. It was a terrific cast and the whole production design, the costume design. I think we also had a lot of fun making it and I think that translates very often onto screen. You can often tell a show that people have enjoyed making and that people have had fun on set and got to really warm to their characters and loved their storylines. You can see it in the actors’ eyes when they don’t enjoy their show, you know?

Stevens with actress Michelle Dockery in a scene from Downton Abbey

AE: What appealed to you about playing Matthew?
DS: Well, I think it was nice for me…. Not dissimilar to Nick Guest in The Line of Beauty, actually. That sort of middle class outsider, as I say, kind of critiquing this world. I too often get cast as the sort of posh guy or the lord or whatever. That’s not really who I am. It’s what happens when you have floppy hair and went to Cambridge.

AE: Note to readers, Dan does have Hugh Grant hair.
DS: I like playing the observer role, so you’re never quite one thing or the other. I like the sort of subliminal, ambiguous characters.

AE: In getting ready for our interview, I went back and looked over The Line of Beauty and obviously Mathew Crawley is straight and Nick Guest was gay, but it seemed that there were a lot of parallels between the two of them. Both suddenly thrust into the upper crust of British Society, both, as you said, sort of observers of what’s going on and both of them have a tragedy looming behind them in the background. Mathew’s got World War I, and Nick is in the 80’s dealing with the AIDS epidemic. Do you see any other similarities between the characters? Did you think about that at all?
DS: I didn’t really think about it. It sort of occurred to me in hindsight, I suppose. I don’t think I was using Nick Guest as a platform for Mathew Crawley. But I certainly enjoy those kinds of roles. And it makes for interesting drama, I think, when you have those kinds of situations. I certainly enjoy reading books [like that]. And actually many novels are based on that kind of story — the outsider coming into a situation and coming to grips with it, not quite understanding it and working it out. I wouldn’t say there was some kind of direct link drawn actively.

AE: But I’m not crazy to see some similarities.
DS: No, not at all. It’s a nice coincidence, I suppose. They’re both characters I’ve really got to grips with. They’re probably the two most enjoyable characters I’ve played in many ways.

AE: Even though The Line of Beauty was only five years ago, it seems like a lot has changed both for you and for gay roles. Playing Nick was a very big step up for you. As a young actor just coming up, were you a little apprehensive about the part?
DS: You know, I wasn’t. It didn’t really even occur to me at the time that this was a sort of a potentially strange thing to be doing. The sexuality of the role was kind of immaterial to me. I’d read the novel, I knew that it was a beautiful book, beautifully written. And I was just desperate to get to grips with this character. And it wasn’t until I told my mom what the show was about and she was like, “Oh, really?” And I said, “Yeah, it’s amazing isn’t it?” And she said, “Do you have to do that?”

She was very reluctant to tell her friends what I was up to. And then the first two episodes came out and people started coming up to her and telling her how much they’d enjoyed the show and she sort of got over her scruples. I was absolutely overawed to be given that opportunity straight out of university. I’d done bits and pieces of theater and hardly any TV. I think it will remain for me a very special job because it really put me on the map in a certain way. As you say, for some people it might seem like an edgy choice or whatever and I’d love to be associated with edgy choices, but it was a no-brainer for me. It was a fantastic production and a wonderful role.