'Downton Abbey' cast bid farewell in final film outing

The "Downton Abbey" cast bid farewell to the franchise with a third and final film, 15 years after the period drama first aired as a television series and gained a huge following in Britain and the United States.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale sees the fictitious Crawley family and their servants running a sprawling English country estate in the early 20th century now entering the 1930s, with patriarch Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) ready to hand over the reins to his daughter, Mary.

But Mary (Michelle Dockery) finds herself facing a public scandal, all while the family tackles new financial woes.

“(Creator and writer) Julian (Fellowes) has constructed a beautiful, if you like, love letter to the loyal audiences that we've garnered over the years," Bonneville told Reuters at the film's world premiere on Wednesday.

"I think those who follow the show will find it a very moving and I think appropriate way to wind up all of the stories."

The film features plenty of other original cast members as well as new faces.

“It's very emotional to say goodbye. We have done it a number of times... we always thought the TV show that was it, then we did one movie, and we’re like we should be so lucky," actor Laura Carmichael, who played Mary's sister Edith, said. "It's nice to know this is it because we wanted to give it...the proper send-off."

The award-winning "Downton Abbey" first aired as a series in 2010, originally set in 1912. It went on for six seasons and was followed by two previous films released in 2019 and 2022.

"We wanted to prove that the people who'd prophesied that period drama was finished, we wanted to prove them wrong. But I don't think it was more than that," Fellowes said of when the show first started.

"At the beginning we thought we might get maybe two or three series out of it, but we didn't think we'd become a kind of world phenomenon."

"Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale" hits cinemas from next week.