Downton Abbey star Jim Carter “felt like Clint Eastwood” in his big comeback scene in the new movie.
The British actor played Downton’s formidable butler Mr. Carson in the TV drama, who was forced into retirement at the end of the final series.
However, Carson returns for the movie, in which royalty come to visit the aristocratic Crawley family, and Jim confessed the scene in which he walks back up to the household made him feel like a real movie star.
“I loved walking back up to the castle, because people are going to like this,” he told WENN at the film’s premiere in London on Monday (September 9, 2019). “I felt a bit like Clint Eastwood walking into town.”
Jim’s wife, British actress Imelda Staunton, has joined the cast of the movie as lady-in-waiting Lady Maud Bagshaw, but the pair barely got to share any scenes together.
“Unfortunately I didn’t really work with her, we went in to work three days on the same day, but we never spoke to each other – much like at home,” the veteran actor joked.
Imelda instead shares many memorable scenes with Maggie Smith, as her character is an old rival of Maggie’s Dowager Countess of Grantham – an experience she compared to playing tennis against Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.
“No one can deliver those lines like she (Maggie) can, if we were all given those lines none of us could do it like she can,” the Vera Drake star gushed.
Jim also expressed a willingness to return for a sequel, saying: “If people like it, you want to do things that people enjoy and that are seen by a lot of people, so that would be very nice.”
