“I knew I wanted Marian Brook to be someone who seemed quite the perfect young woman from that period — mild, demure, rather easy to deal with,” Fellowes said in a recent phone conversation from London. “But, as the story unfurled, it would become clearer and clearer that she had, in fact, got an extremely strong will of her own.”
Initially, Jacobson said, the learning curve was steep: She was intimidated by the veteran talent around her, Baranski in particular.
“I’m the one who gave her a really hard time,” Baranski acknowledged. “I tend to stay in character between shots, and I think it was quite terrifying. I felt bad because I thought, ‘Oh, does she really think this is me?’”
Also, Jacobson’s corset was too tight.
“I finally said, ‘Can you breathe in that?’” Baranski said. “And she said, ‘No, I go home and I’m wracked in pain, and I’m having trouble sitting and I’m having trouble speaking.’
“And I said, ‘Are you kidding? You loosen that corset.’” (Midway through the first season, Baranski said, she did.)
At first, Jacobson said, she was also becoming trapped in her own head, overthinking things. That’s when Nixon, a veteran actress and director, stepped in with some advice.