Sophia Michaels
After a brush with George Clooney, Maggie Smith was left swooning and speechless. The formidable matriarch is renowned for her withering one-liners and terrifying takedowns.
Maggie Smith plays the unflappable Dowager Countess in “Downton Abbey.” The formidable matriarch is renowned for her withering one-liners and terrifying takedowns. However, Smith was left swooning and speechless after a brush with George Clooney. Tom Cullen, who plays Lady Mary’s squeeze, Anthony Foyle, Viscount Gillingham in the series, spilled the Downton tea in an interview on “Lorraine” (via Vanity Fair).
After Clooney swooped in for the inevitable period drama hand kiss, Cullen said that Smith had a wholly unexpected but totally understandable reaction. “She collapsed onto the sofa,” he shared. Clooney’s work wasn’t over yet, though. Either there was a lot of mistletoe on set that day, or he was in the mood for spreading some serious Christmas cheer. Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Downton’s Lady Grantham, claimed that Clooney, who played her husband in an alternative reality wedding scene, was smooching up a storm all over the show.
“It was special for me because there was a scripted kiss, so I was a bit shocked to see his wedding go forward after our professional day together!” McGovern joked to the Daily Beast, referring to Clooney’s real-life marriage to Amal Alamuddin that occurred after filming. “I have not been quite the same ever since. He’s truly as charming as you’d hope him to be, and smart, and has his heart in the right place,” she continued. “He was kissing everybody that day! But he wasn’t trying it on; it was all scripted.”
