Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary Crawley, showed her baby bump on the red carpet Monday night as she joined Downton Abbey co-stars for the New York premiere of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.
The 43-year-old actress wore a sparkling black, body-hugging gown as she posed with colleagues at Jazz at Lincoln Center, days after announcing her pregnancy at the London premiere. Dockery married producer Jasper Waller-Bridge in 2023; her previous fiancé, publicist John Dineen, died in 2015 after a battle with a rare cancer.
Dockery embraced her on-screen mother, Elizabeth McGovern, on the New York carpet. McGovern, who portrays Cora, Countess of Grantham, wore a neon pink-and-orange sequin dress. Other cast members at the event included Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith), Joanne Froggatt (Anna Bates), Hugh Bonneville (Lord Grantham), Allen Leech (Tom Branson), Paul Giamatti and series creator Julian Fellowes. Executive producer Gareth Neame and model Maye Musk were also photographed at the Lincoln Center screening.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, scheduled for release Sept. 12, is set in 1930, roughly 18 years after the first episode of the television series. The film follows the Crawley family in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash and centers on Lady Mary’s scandalous divorce and whether she remains eligible to inherit Downton Abbey amid public scrutiny. The story also addresses financial pressures on the family and the household's struggle with the threat of social disgrace.
The film marks the first Downton television or motion-picture project not to feature Dame Maggie Smith, who died last September. The production includes a tribute to her character, the Dowager Countess of Grantham.
Fellowes attended the premiere and has recently commented publicly on British attitudes toward wealth. In an interview with Radio Times, he said Britain has a “curious double standard of hating the rich and hating anyone who has been very successful, and yet wanting it,” adding that he finds it “ungenerous not to admire people who have done very well.”
The franchise began as a television series more than a decade ago and expanded into a trilogy of films. Cast members have reunited at premieres in London and New York to celebrate the conclusion of the story that brought the Crawley family to international prominence.
At the London premiere last week, Dockery announced her pregnancy; Bonneville attended that event with his girlfriend, Heidi Kadlecova. On both sides of the Atlantic, the premieres drew media attention for fashion choices as well as the film’s themes of legacy, change and social standing as the series reaches its narrative close.