Hugh Bonneville - Playing Under the Piano: From Downton to Darkest Peru

Not really my cup of tea, said my agent.

Well, Donna, I think its going to be a global phenomenon, I said.

It was 2009, and the script under discussion was Downton Abbey. I didnt in fact predict the shows worldwide success but were only a few lines in here and I want you to think Im smart.

Nine years and fifty-two episodes later we were about to do the readthrough for the first Downton Abbey film. A memo came through from the publicity team saying that Focus Features, the financiers of the movie, had come up with a shiny idea with which to tease our audience. As we assembled on a sound stage at Twickenham Studios, a film crew would capture us clasping each other as we reunited after three years apart. Moments of coffee drinking and satsuma peeling would be caught on camera for posterity as the returning heroes prepared for another foray into the world of the British aristocracy between the wars; the show that its creators had first pitched as Merchant Ivory meets The West Wing. Then, during the readthrough itself, a supercool 360 camera would record the experience in a digitally shimmering way and there would be a photographer snapping it for all eternity.

A knot tightened in my stomach.

Readthroughs in any genre of entertainment are awkward at the best of times. For the writer(s) its like giving birth on the centre spot of a football pitch in front of a capacity crowd. For everyone else its first day at Big School. Because of the number of personnel involved, it usually takes place in an anonymous hall, deconsecrated church or, if at a British film studio, in an airless condemned sound stage with what looks worryingly like asbestos billowing out of the chicken-wire walls.

On a table in one corner next to the scalding/freezing urn is a tower of Styrofoam cups, tea bags, coffee (granulated if its theatre, cafetire if its TV, barista chain or possibly in-house if its a movie), a smattering of fruit and biscuits and a stack of croissants that no one dares touch because youre on a diet, obviously; now that youve got a job youre no longer prone to stuffing your face with the unfairness of it all.

If youre lucky youll know a couple of people from other jobs and if so you cling to each other like shipwreck survivors, reliving the horrors of Harrogate 88, or Peak Practice 09. Some real car crashes of productions, some invented but worth amplifying anyway in these nerve-shredding circumstances.

Over there is a producer, in a daze because he or she never thought theyd actually get to this point without either having a nervous breakdown or being fired by the money people. Nearby is the director, either quivering because theyve finally agreed that the schedule is unshootable, or worryingly relaxed (beta blockers) for the same reason knowing they too may be relieved of their duties before long, or may just walk.

If youre a guest artist on a series then, however welcoming the principals might be, you are by definition An Outsider. As everyone else mingles and brays and says See You in a Bit, like theyre at a glittering cocktail party thats never going to end, you hang around the edges of the room gradually deconstructing your Styrofoam cup until it resembles a piece of failed origami with a brown drip. Alternatively, you sit in your allocated spot at the trestle table which has a place card on it with your real name misspelled and beneath it in brackets your character AN OUTSIDER (ep. 2). You want the floor to open up and put you out of your misery, preferably plunging the cliquey overpaid stars to their deaths as well, along with their hilarious in-joke wrap-gift mugs from last season with the special herbal drink in it that some runner had to get them from the production office because thats what theyre meant to do and Christ how they hate it but as Dad said, everyone has to start somewhere, Tiger.

I guess whoever had the task of telling Maggie Smith about the bright shiny marketing idea of filming up our nostrils throughout this emotionally complex rendezvous had been met with a brief and final Oh I dont think so, because there were, thank God, no 360 cameras in evidence as we assembled for the day. The reunion.

Our hugs and smiles went unrecorded. It was three years since wed last been together in the same room but I can tell you that the bond of those six seasons working with largely the same group of people was tangible. In a good way.

As we started to read I looked round the huge square of tables, catching Lesleys eye, now Brendans Mrs. Patmore, Mr. Bates. A shared smile and a shake of the head, almost of disbelief. Who would have thought it? And then Liz Trubridge, one of our executive producers, the one closest to the cast and its welfare from day one, who had been going to leave after the second season to pursue other projects but had said to me one day, I cant leave. This shows in my blood now.

I suppose thats how we all felt as the series continued to roll out around the world.

We were standing in a garden in Dorset watching a camera track being laid for the next shot when Julian Fellowes first told me about Downton Abbey. He was directing me in a film called From Time to Time. Maggie Smith is brilliant in it. Well, what else would you expect? Seemingly half the future cast of Downton Abbey were in it too.

You writing anything else at the moment? I asked.

Julians statuesque wife Emma was nearby, chaperoning her elderly mother who was sitting in a chair next to the sound recordist, a rug over her knees. Now Mummy, when that man over there with the walkie-talkie says Action you zzzzp, said Emma firmly, zipping her mouth with one hand and adjusting Mummys blanket with the other.

Well, yes, Julian answered me, a number of things on the go, as a matter of fact.