It's impossible now to imagine anyone other than Carmichael playing the endlessly complicated Edith, but it almost happened! Around the same time as her audition for the role of Lady Edith, she landed the leading role of Viola in a touring production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night."
"A few days later my agent said, 'You have an audition for a period drama.' I thought it was going to be a 'Yes, milord,' a half-day's filming, one line maybe. But it would be good to have on your CV that you'd done telly," she told the Tribune News Service. "And I thought, 'I'm going to have to turn down this dream Shakespeare [role] for this TV job. What a disaster!' And it was 'Downton.' So I went and read and realized it was for a lead part. And I don't know how it happened . . . [and] I thought, 'I can do this' and 'This part is mine.'"
