Lady Mary goes pop: Michelle Dockery on making music with Downton co-star Michael Fox

Michael Fox and Michelle Dockery began writing songs while filming Downton Abbey. Now the pair have have ditched acting to conquer music

Michelle Dockery has played Ophelia in Hamlet, an East End car dealer in Guy Ritchie’s most recent crime caper, and a steely barrister in Netflix’s current hit Anatomy of a Scandal. But to some fans, she is Lady Mary from Downton Abbey, and that’s all there is to it. “There’s definitely a surprise when people meet me. The way they react sometimes – it’s like there’s a sort of deference, like they think we’re royalty,” she laughs. When she’s out with Laura Carmichael, who plays her sister, Lady Edith, the effect is doubled: “They’re quite disappointed that we wear jeans.”

Her latest project may help to shake off the Lady Mary aura, because Dockery gets to be entirely herself. She is taking a break from acting to launch a music career with her Downton co-star Michael Fox. The duo are simply titled Michael and Michelle (“We thought about band names, but everyone kept calling us ‘Michael and Michelle’ and we just liked the sound of it – it was a really easy decision”) and their debut EP, The Watching Silence, is released this week on Decca Records. It features four tracks of dreamy, melodic folk, described by the label as “Nashville Americana shot through with London realism”.

The partnership was formed after Fox, 33, joined the Downton cast in 2015, as footman Andy Parker, and found himself at a loose end between scenes. “There’s a lot of time spent basically just hanging around,” he says. He brought his guitar to the Highclere Castle set to pass the time and, realising that Dockery had an “amazing” voice, invited her to sing with him. They bonded over their shared musical tastes: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell. “We started to play a few covers and stuff, and then it just kind of escalated.”

They don’t want anyone to think this is just a hobby: they’ve cleared their schedules for the next few months to give the music their full attention. “We don’t really see this as a side project,” says Dockery, firmly. “Maybe in the past it was, but now we’re going into it 100 per cent.”

They both play guitar on the record, and have collaborated on music and lyrics. It’s clear that, for Dockery, this departure from acting is a thrill. “When the writing is coming from you, and you’re not saying somebody else’s words – I find that really liberating.”

The publicity for the EP refers to “jamming sessions” on set, which conjures images of Hugh Bonneville on backing vocals and Maggie Smith on drums. Sadly, it wasn’t quite like that, although Elizabeth McGovern (Lady Cora) did sometimes join in, as she has a band of her own.

Now 40, Dockery began singing lessons at the age of eight, had opera training, and performed with a grunge band in her teens. “Then, during the first few years of my acting career, I was on the jazz scene. I was offered the chance to sign up with a label and do my own album, but it would have all been covers of old standards. I never quite found the right place for my voice or genre until I met Michael. It was a game changer when we started writing together.”

Fox – who is in a relationship with Carmichael; they have a one-year-old son – had performed with a succession of bands that enjoyed what he cheerily describes as “mediocre success” before hooking up with Dockery. “I never thought of myself as just an actor,” he says. In fact, he originally hoped to pursue an equestrian career, having competed in eventing from the age of 12.

“I wanted to event or go into the Household Cavalry or the mounted police,” he says of his early ambitions. “When I got Downton, I had to take a step back. I don’t think I was allowed to compete because of insurance and stuff. I did tend to fall off a lot…” Now, he follows the sport as an owner; his horse competed at Badminton this year. Dockery can also ride, and they joke about not letting their skills go to waste: “It’d be a good video – us galloping across the desert on horses!”

Michelle Dockery: 'I never quite found the right place for my voice until I met Michael'Credit: Cal McIntyre

As one of the later additions to the Downton cast, Fox still marvels at the show’s popularity. “If I’d known how big it was going to be, in terms of how much it’s changed my life, I don’t think I would have been able to do the audition,” he says. He had played only bit parts until being cast as Parker, a couple of years out of drama school.

Dockery, of course, has had many more years of stardom. She and her partner, Jasper Waller-Bridge (brother of Fleabag’s Phoebe), recently announced their engagement, but otherwise she guards her privacy.

She appears in Anatomy of a Scandal with Sienna Miller, who plays a Tory MP’s wife in the eye of a media storm. Miller has spoken of her own toxic experience of fame, with constant intrusion by reporters and paparazzi. Are things different for famous actresses now? “I’ve had my fair share of it in the past,” says Dockery (after her previous partner, John Dineen, died in 2015, the tabloids were on her doorstep).

“Sienna is an absolute hero, because what she has done has really changed a lot of that. There are privacy laws now that are in place because of her. There are certain times where it has been really intrusive, but it feels like there has been a little bit of a shift.”

From Downton fans, though, the attention she receives is benign. The biggest secret she and Fox had to keep over the past 12 months was the plot of the new film, which features the death of one of the drama’s most popular figures. “It wasn’t a surprise, because of course that storyline was set up in the first film,” says Dockery, but it was still an emotional goodbye for the cast. “We’ve spent a really long time with each other. We’re a family. [The death scene] was quite a moment for everybody.”

Can the franchise continue, even in the absence of many viewers’ favourite character? “I think it can,” says Fox. “We’d like it to carry on.”

For now, though, they’re concentrating on the music. Later this month, they will be back in the studio to work on an album, and they play their first gig on June 6, with more planned (“We’ve got dreams to tour America at some point,” says Dockery). While the popularity  of Downton Abbey will certainly help bring them attention, they hope the music will stand on its own merits.

“I don’t think we’d want to do it if it felt like people were just coming to the music because of Downton,” says Fox. “It’s us; we’re not playing characters,” Dockery adds, with what sounds like a hint of relief. “I think it will be a whole other experience.”

The Watching Silence is out now on Decca Records