Elizabeth McGovern has revealed the Downton Abbey cast broke the ban on improvisation in the third and final film.

The American actress, who plays Cora Crawley in the British period drama, revealed to Deadline that the cast was never allowed to improvise and had to say exactly what was written in their scripts while filming the original TV series and the first two film continuations.

However, while filming The Grand Finale, which was directed by her husband Simon Curtis, they were able to be “slightly looser” with their dialogue.

“Well, until this movie, I’m telling you, no word was ever ad-libbed,” she shared. “The only thing that we ever, ever started to slightly become slightly looser was in this final movie… because most of the time, there was an absolute rule that not one syllable could ever be ever changed, which in a way gives it its distinctive flavour.”

McGovern admitted that she didn’t initially enjoy the strictness and “the obsession with the English way of doing things”, but “never objected” because she “always thought that was how we keep that special feeling about it”.

For The Grand Finale, McGovern was once again joined by her co-stars Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery and Joanne Froggatt, among others. One noticeable absence was Dame Maggie Smith, who passed away in September 2024.

While McGovern missed her late co-star enormously, she still felt her presence on set.

“(It didn’t feel) like the bottom’s dropped out of it, which is what I was worried you’d feel without her, because she’s really there,” she said. “She’s there. She’s permeates everything, definitely.”

The 64-year-old, who has played Cora on and off since 2010, also confirmed that The Grand Finale is the final farewell for the cast.

“It is, definitely. I can tell you that,” she stated, before teasing, “Unless they do something like they go back in time and it’s a different cast. You know, the young Maggie. There’s been quite a lot of that sort of talk.”

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale will be released in cinemas on 12 September.

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