‘Downton Abbey’ creator Julian Fellowes talks series finale, movie

“Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes offered a valuable post-mortem on the “Masterpiece Studio” podcast after Sunday’s six-season wrap. Many subjects covered, and a few outtakes below, but perhaps the biggest takeaway: He does indeed want to do a movie.

Fellowes’ thoughts on the sweet, gentle-into-the-good-snowy-night ending:

“I might be accused of a certain sentimentality but I got very fond of them all and wanted them all to have a nice life in the ether or wherever TV characters goes after the end of their show.”

Lady Edith -- Laura Carmichael -- almost becomes the focus of the last episode, in that all’s-well-that-ends-well moment with, or moments.

“Edith was one of those people that it never came right for, always missed the train ... what Laura injected into the character and I eventually started to write for was this gallantry ... she wouldn’t accept defeat. She became rather an admirable character and felt she had earned a happy ending.”

A nice, tidy ending for other characters but not too tidy ...

“I didn’t want it too tidy partly, I suppose, in case there’s a movie, which there might be. I wanted a sense of warmth, a sense of generosity towards these people we’ve come to know so well. You want the final episode in a slightly different mood, to say goodbye to them ... I felt I wanted that atmosphere where people were sort of raising a glass as they bid them farewell.”

Sure, good chance for the movie ...

“A film would be fun and I’m completely up for it. There are various elements — one is whether or not they can get enough of the cast. All of the cast is very sought after now, as they deserve to be, so we would be assembling them while everyone else wants them. I hope we can get them together.

The appeal of “Downton” all these years ...

“There were elements of this period that seemed more secure than our own, in some ways, that was a false perception as we tried to show everything was changing and yet between the wars, they [the Crawleys] held on. We are a much more disordered generation and sometimes it makes us feel a bit bewildered, like invitations that say ‘casual chic.’ What is that? There are areas of behavior that we quite don’t know what’s expected of us any more and that does create a certain nostalgia for elements of the past. Not all of it -- we don’t have to live it and get up at 4 in the morning and scrub the grate. We can enjoy without getting involved in the injustices.”

This was the right time to end ...

“The main reason I wouldn’t have put them through the crash [leading to the Great Depression] is that in the end, I didn’t want them to age too much. If we had gone on to the war, they would have been covered in talcum powder and latex and I don’t think that’s a very good look.”

By Verne J Gay

Verne.Gay@newsday.com@vernejgay

Verne J Gay is the television critic