Oh Downton Abbey, you do torment us so. If you're still watching Season 1 then apologies for the mild spoiler in the headline there, but really, everyone knows by now that Lady Sybil has left the show. We'll we getting into the nitty gritty details of Jessica Brown Findlay's departure below though, so you may want to look away now if you still don't know what happened.
Season 3 was an interesting one at the Abbey, because we knew going into it that someone would be born and somebody would die: If you had told us all of this would happen in a matter of 30 minutes, we probably wouldn't have believed you. And f you'd told us Fellowes was going to kill off Lady Sybil, well, we probably would have clattered you over the head in disbelief. So, when she died in childbirth there was an understandable cry of angry disbelief from fans around the country.
Turns out we need not have been so angry though, because Jessica Brown Findlay says she was the one who made the decision to leave the show, fearing she'd fall into her comfort zone if Sybil lived on. "'My contract was ending and I was unsure about signing away another year. Leaving terrified me, and that's what made me want to do it,' she told The Radio Times.
"Being afraid and going into the unknown excites me, and what scared me more was to keep going and then one day discover it was all I could do and wish I had pushed myself more. I'd prefer to fail and fall flat on my face", she added. Her latest TV outing, Labyrinth, takes Brown Findlay far from the Abbey, and even sees the former Lady Sybil flashing the flesh for a love scene. It isn't the first time, she went momentarily topless in Albatross back in 2011 too. Still, poor Branson, he never even got a look in and was left holding the baby...
"In Labyrinth it is a very fleeting moment that we shot in one take, but I did find it very odd being naked in front of lots of people and I think it's awful that women get so criticised about their bodies,' the actress explained. "I think if you're going to do a nude scene, be honest and natural. Otherwise I'd be starving myself for ever, which I just couldn't do! The idea that actresses would work out at the gym for a thousand hours beforehand... I was drinking pints and eating burgers." We're with you on that one Jess!
If you want to catch Jessica in Labyrinth, which also features our very own Katie McGrath and Harry Potter star Tom Felton, you can see two part mini-series, based on the book by Kate Mosse, on Channel 4 over the Easter weekend.
