By Melanie Finn, Showbiz Editor
Saturday November 03 2012
Downton Abbey's Dublin-born star Allen Leech has defended the show from claims that it portrays the Irish in a negative light, while admitting he had to swot up on Irish history for the role.
The actor (31) plays rebellious Tom Branson in the hit period drama and had many of the biggest storylines in the third series.
However, eyebrows were raised among Irish viewers when a recent episode showed Maggie Smith, who plays the Countess of Grantham, referring to Branson's Irish brother as a "drunken gorilla".
And there is no shortage of anti-Irish sentiment in recent episodes, given the aristocratic family's horror at his decision to raise his baby with his wife Lady Sybil as a Catholic.
Yet Allen, in Dublin to launch Brown Thomas's Christmas season, said it was a realistic portrayal of the era, given all the Anglo-Irish tensions arising from the 1920 War of Independence.
"You have to remember that, at that time, in England, that's actually how the Irish were depicted," he explained.
READ MORE: http://www.herald.ie/entertainment/around-town/downtons-not-antiirish-says-star-alan-3281435.html
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