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‘Downton’ creator reveals the inspiration behind characters

Julian Fellowes, the writer and creator of the hit period drama “Downton Abbey,” reveals the inspiration behind some of his most notable characters.

Fellowes tells the December issue of Vanity Fair that his show is a lot like the “The Waltons,” the classic television drama that followed a family living during the Depression and World War II. “The appeal of the show is that, on the whole, it’s sufficiently complicated for it not to be ‘The Waltons,’ but, at the same time, I think ‘The Waltons’ was a big hit because they were very nice. “I think that our show is about nice people.”

Fellowes tells the magazine that Maggie Smith’s sharp-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham is inspired by one of his great-aunts. “Aunt Isie had this sort of acerbic wit, yet she was kind,” Fellowes says. “Lots of those lines Maggie has, like ‘Bought marmalade! Oh dear, I call that very feeble,’ and ‘What is a weekend?’—they came straight from her.”

The Oscar winner (for 2002’s “Gosford Park”) says that he writes the “Downton” scripts entirely on his own, but his wife, Emma Kitchener, dictates many parts. For example, it was his wife’s idea to make the character John Bates disabled. “She said, ‘I think you ought to have a disabled character.’ And it was brilliant, because it meant Robert [the Downton Abbey patriarch] had to be much more invested in hiring him. Their relationship became more layered.”

When talking about the villainous Thomas he says, “the fact that Thomas is gay makes him slightly sympathetic because being gay in that period was a crime. His nastiness is his way of revenging himself on a world that has dealt with him unjustly.”

In the interview, Fellowes describes himself as a “closet lazy person,” who works from 9:15 in the morning to noon, breaks for lunch, and continues till 6 p.m. because at that point, he says, “I tend to slightly run out of puff.”

Fellowes was raised just on the outside of the aristocratic landscape he writes. He describes his place as “a very sort of junior, minor position within that world.”

The Brit was recently presented with the 2012 Edith Wharton Lifetime Achievement Award at a gala in Boston.