Downton Abbey captivated interior design and architecture enthusiasts with elegant period sets anchored by Grade 1-listed Highclere Castle as the Abbey. Production designer Donal Woods sustained that visual standard across six seasons and two films. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale premieres September 12 as the franchise's official finale. The film revisits many beloved locations and debuts three new sets. Director Simon Curtis and Woods described the intricacies of scouting and dressing locations to evoke 1930s England. For the Royal Ascot sequence, modern Ascot was too contemporary, so the crew scouted roughly ten courses and chose Ripon Races for its period buildings and suitable track configuration.
Few franchises have dazzled interior design and architecture lovers in the way that Downton Abbey has. Perhaps the only character more camera-worthy than the upstairs-downstairs assemblage in the British historical drama was the Abbey itself, played beautifully by Grade 1-listed country house Highclere Castle. Over the course of six seasons and two movies, fans began to expect that level of elegance and verisimilitude in all of Downton's sets: a tall order for longtime series production designer Donal Woods.
And now it all comes to a fantastic end with Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the third film and the official finale of the franchise, which premieres in theaters on September 12. While many of the series' beloved filming locations make an appearance (you can't have Downton without Downton, of course), there are three new sets which AD can reveal for the first time here.
Few things scream upper-class Britain more loudly than the famed Royal Ascot horse race, which makes it an ideal setting for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. But the modern day Ascot Racecourse has been built out almost beyond recognition to what it looked like in the last century. "It's a huge, glass modern building-like something out of an airport," Woods tells AD.
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