Having bid farewell to The Crown in a blaze of corgis and crêpe de chine, Imelda Staunton appears to be having interval drama withdrawals. The 68-year-old—who’s appeared as lady-in-waiting Maud Bagshaw in each Downton Abbey: The Movement Image and Downton Abbey: A New Period, and is married to Jim Carter of Carson fame—dropped by BBC Radio 2 this week, and confirmed to host Zoe Ball that, sure, “There can be a last movie—there you go.” Ball, in terribly British vogue, apologized if she had prompted Staunton to talk out of NDA-clad flip. The Oscar nominee’s Violet Crawley-esque response? “I don’t care.”

Downton Abbey famously ran for six seasons between 2010 and 2015 (though it ought to have stopped at three), with Downton Abbey: The Movement Image launched in 2019. If the sequence correct concluded in 1925, the primary film takes place two years later, in 1927, and revolves across the Crawleys and their employees foiling an assassination plot mounted towards King George V. The second movie, which premiered in 2022, had a meta twist to it, centering on the capturing of a “transferring image” on the Abbey (with a sojourn to the South of France thrown in for good measure). Focus Options has but to substantiate Staunton’s assertion, however rumors are swirling that manufacturing will start as early as this summer time, with Paul Giamatti anticipated to revive his position as Cora’s England-averse American brother, Harold Levinson.

Within the meantime, Staunton can be showing as matchmaker Dolly Levi within the first West Finish revival of Howdy, Dolly since 1984 on the London Palladium. Opening on July 6, the 10-week-run will reunite Imelda with director Dominic Cooke, the mastermind behind the Nationwide’s acclaimed 2017 tackle Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. The duo’s Howdy, Dolly is each extremely anticipated and lengthy awaited, having initially been slated to run on the Adelphi in 2020 earlier than COVID-19 scuppered everybody’s plans—and pushed Staunton within the route of display work for the foreseeable future. And whereas one other Downton movie is all nicely and good, I, for one, can’t wait to see her treading the boards once more. “Properly, whats up, Imelda, it’s so good to have you ever again the place you belong…”