In the lead-up to the Downton Abbey Christmas Special, we spoke with Matt Barber, one of the show’s newest stars, about his character Atticus Aldridge.
This interview was conducted during Downton Abbey’s UK airing – we’re bringing it back for the American crowd now that the PBS season is done!
Atticus Aldridge, Lady Rose’s brand-new beau, achieved instant popularity in Downton Abbey‘s fifth season. Portrayed by Matt Barber, the handsome young newcomer to Downton’s large roster of characters is a thoroughly decent fellow, clever, confident, sweet and great fun to watch — he’s one of the most likeable additions to the show in recent years. He and his family also added another societal issue to the 1920s setting — they’re the show’s first major Jewish characters, which causes a few obstacles for the young couple on their path to happiness.
Hypable had the opportunity to speak with Matt Barber in advance of Downton Abbey’s Christmas Special, airing this week. Our in-depth interview, which we’ll present in two parts, covers everything from the show’s intricate costuming and Matt’s previous work with Downton star Michelle Dockery to Atticus’ stag party scandal and the similarities between his on-screen and off-screen engagements! Of course, what we wanted to know right away was simply: what’s that intangible factor that makes Atticus seem like such a great guy?
We recently included Atticus in a feature discussing the change in tone of “good guys” in media. Atticus arrived this season on Downton Abbey and he’s likeable, smart, earnest, truly decent and not even the tiniest bit dull. He wasn’t the innocent buffoon, and he wasn’t the secretly-horrid charmer, where you’re waiting for the other foot to drop. What gives him that genuine quality?
Matt Barber: He comes from a background of marginalism. Obviously he comes from a very privileged background, that goes without saying, and so you can always say that some people have it easier than others and they should just get on with their lives, but he also comes from this background of inherent and endemic discrimination because he’s Jewish. In that conversation with his father — it’s clearly such a major part of who they are under the surface, and presumably that means that who they are above the surface is massively informed by that.
In my experience in life, people respond to hardship, whether that’s discrimination, marginalism or other more practical hardships in their lives, by going one of two ways — either it informs who they are in a very negative way or it informs who they are in a positive way. It’s either the thing you hold against everyone or it becomes the thing that means you realize why it’s worth doing well, being nice, looking out for other people, doing all of that sort of thing.
For me, I think that’s where his goodwill and his nature comes from, that’s how he’s responded to this eternal underlying discrimination on his side. If you’re not a nice person in that kind of situation, you turn out like a kind of Thomas Barrow type. Because [Barrow’s homosexuality] it’s not a dissimilar type of thing, where essentially at that point in time, there’s something about him that sets him apart from everyone else. It has to stay under the surface, but it massively informs who he is. That’s a really good example of the kind of character that’s gone the other way and he’s got it in for everyone as a result.
And it’s funny, because people love Barrow. Every time he does something good it is so heartfelt and people really root for him and don’t want him to be unhappy. But he is completely awful while having this depth, and that’s sort of been the standard for a while now, where the go-to “interesting” characters on TV are the ones who are unlikeable, whereas Atticus is a great example of how to write a character who’s a lovely person and who isn’t boring, which is really refreshing. People don’t have to be bogged down in their own mistakes and misery in order for them to have depth.
MB: Agreed, agreed. I think that with these more positive, generous characters, there’s as much scope to explore the hardships they experience as there are for nasty characters. I think it is literally just a choice of how they respond to things. And I think that the writing in any case becomes interesting when you’re seeing people deal with difficult situations in their own lives in different ways. I think nice characters and nasty characters both become boring when either their response is predictable or they don’t really have any difficulties to deal with, because that’s where drama is, in that kind of conflict.
‘I think nice characters and nasty characters both become boring when their response is predictable.’
I’d love to see a character like Atticus dealing with really, really horrible things, because it fascinates me to see, or to explore, somebody with that sort of nature and how long he could hold on to it for. How long you can carry on with it for? Because he does seem genuine in that. He does seem genuinely generous, in terms of his life, his character, and the way he deals with other people, and it would be really interesting to see how long it’s possible to hold onto that.
On the next page: Atticus’s naughty photograph scandal and how the Crawleys were probably considered eccentric!
In the season 5 finale, there was a scandal surrounding Atticus and a prostitute at his stag party. It surprised me how quickly the episode established that he wasn’t, in fact, guilty of anything — his character was never called into question by the audience. Did you expect a bit more controversy about whether he betrayed Rose or not?
MB: If you think about the time period, that’s a big enough problem even if he’s not guilty. Way, way big enough to easily cause enough scandal to mean the wedding can’t happen. And I think that’s an easy thing to forget. It’s like when you’re doing Shakespeare. A very easy thing to forget is that God exists at that time, that the play was written in the context of there being a completely separate power that everything is kind of answerable to. As a modern actor and audience, you don’t watch Shakespeare in that context unless you really kind of remember that you have to in order to understand, because we don’t necessarily believe that.
It’s exactly the same with watching Downton, remembering the constricts of the time. I think as an audience we’ve watched Downton over the past five years and you kind of get comfortable with these characters and start to think of them in a far more modern context. But they’re still so constrained by the logistics and the culture and the expectations of their time, and the behavioural necessities and the responsibilities and all that sort of stuff, the baggage, that we’re still trying to shake off in a number of different ways today!
On his character’s new in-laws: ‘I think the idea is that they’re a bit weird!’
Everybody loves to hate Larry Grey [Lord Merton’s son] and his explosion at the dinner table, but if you’re looking at a cross-section of society at that time, that’s probably the more likely way that people would have responded than how the Crawleys do. I think the idea is that they’re a bit weird, everybody knows they have an eclectic choice of relations, they’re “a house for accepting unusual other halves.” That’s what Larry Grey says. And it’s probably not unlikely that people thought like that about a family like this — that they’re just a bit unusual and eccentric, and we don’t see that as an audience because they’re the family that we’re following.
So something like a guy getting framed with a prostitute — just the fact that those pictures exist? Think about how Atticus’ father responds to the idea of divorce. Just the idea of being associated with another family’s divorce is enough to make him want to call off the wedding. Pictures of your future husband with a prostitute, you’re basically forcing yourself to be a pariah. Stuff like this is astronomical, even without needing to make a bigger thing out of it and keep the audience on tenterhooks as to whether it was him or whether it was a set-up. It’s big enough that Rose may still turn around and not be able to marry him, just because of the way things were.
Fortunately, the wedding did end up happening! Atticus and Rose’s relationship developed quite swiftly on screen but it did come across as very real love. Do you believe that those connections can happen that quickly in real life or do you think it’s more emblematic of how marriages happened in that time period?
MB: I think it was possible, and relatively normal, to move that fast with [engagements and marriages] at that time. I think that’s really important. And I think stuff can naturally move very quickly as well. I got engaged myself within the last year. I got engaged to a girl that I had been with for nine months, and I might have had a different answer previously, but in all honesty, that whole thing about “when you know, you know,” it’s very true. It’s just immediately very obvious, and if it’s very obvious then it suddenly makes sense to do things quickly rather than wait, because there’s just no point in waiting, and I really had a sense of that in mind.
It’s funny, because I shot my first scene for Downton and I had a couple weeks off because everything shoots quite sporadically due to the whole upstairs/downstairs divide, and when I came back I had gotten engaged. And so it was really interesting, the way the storyline develops in Downton is actually pretty close to what happened in my own life. I think I would have played it differently had I not had that experience, and I would have probably been saying something like, “I think things move faster at that time so it’s probably a bit emblematic.”
But I do think, genuinely, that what happens with Rose and Atticus is that it’s essentially two people who meet who are incredibly compatible, they like each other a lot, essentially every box is ticked. And once that’s happened, it’s like, “We might as well get on with it, because it’s going to be far more fun if all of this stuff is taken care of. Then we’re together and we can just get on with living our lives rather than just not being together.” And especially more so at that time, when before you were married you were far more separate than you are these days.
The second that Atticus’ parents come over to Downton, that basically means that marriage is going to happen, because your parents wouldn’t meet unless you’re going to get married. And the first time that they kiss, actually the only time you see them kiss, is after they get engaged. There was this big thing that we were always kind of aware of which was about, kind of, personal contact. There was no hand-holding, you couldn’t get time alone with each other. If a guy and a girl are alone together it’s pretty scandalous, unless they get engaged!
The two-hour Downton Abbey Christmas Special premieres this Thursday, December 25, at 9 p.m. on ITV. Find Matt at @MattJLBarber on Twitter.