Allen Leech broke into Downton Abbey set after drunk night out

Downton Abbey star Allen Leech risked arrest by breaking into the show’s set after he was left locked out of his hotel following a drunken night out. The Irish actor, who plays former chauffeur Tom Branson in the hit period drama, went out for post-filming drinks with his co-star Rob James-Collier, who plays villainous footman Thomas Barrow, and the evening ended in disaster when Leech was left without a place to stay.
He decided to break into the show’s set and sleep in his trailer, but he risked landing himself in serious trouble.
Leech tells Britain’s Event magazine, “We’d been at work so we decided to have a few beers followed by quite a lot of Old Rosie cider. We were staying in different hotels and unfortunately I’d forgotten to check in to mine; the doors were locked and I couldn’t get in. I called Rob but he was out cold, so the only option was to go back to the set and try to sleep in my trailer. I used my bag to cover the spikes on the massive gates as I shimmied over, then dodged through the darkness to the trailers.
“The next morning I had a two-hour walk back to my hotel to clean up and come back. I then had to do a very long scene with Richard E. Grant with the footsteps of Old Rosie banging through my brains. Thank God I wasn’t arrested, as that would have been very embarrassing – Branson breaking into Downton.”