Do 'Downton Abbey' & 'The Gilded Age' Exist in the Same Universe? Show's Executive Producer Responds!

As we wait for the third Downton Abbey movie and the third season of The Gilded Age, you might be wondering if both titles exist in the same universe.

In a new interview, an executive producer from The Gilded Age, who also worked on Downton Abbey, addressed whether or not there’s a connection between the two shows.

The HBO series takes place in the late 1800s at the start of the American Gilded Age, three decades before the events of Downton Abbey. The two TV shows also come from the same creator, Julian Fellowes, and feature tons of upstairs/downstairs drama.

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“[A crossover is] not in the thinking at all,” Gareth Neame told TV Line. “It’s a separate universe, but they’re both fictions set in the 1880s. Downton Abbey, in its own fiction, was definitely there. A younger version of the Maggie Smith character would be living there, I guess. But it’s not really planned.”

He went on to joke that since crossovers and reboots are so big these days, it “will only take a decade or so for HBO or Universal to say, ‘Great, let’s do a Gilded meets Downton mashup!’” But Gareth added that it’s “not currently on the slate.”

Find out who will and won’t be returning for the third and final Downton Abbey film and who has exited The Gilded Age this season.