Anna Bates Gets the Night Off

'Downton Abbey' star Joanne Froggatt attends the BFI London Film Festival Awards

Mrs. Hughes guilted Mr. Carson into giving Anna the night off, because the poor thing's had a rough go of it lately.

*Spoiler Alert: Do not read any further unless you want your American experience of Downton Abbey to be ruined* 

Joanne Froggatt took a curling barrel to her hair, put on some of that coloring those vaudeville girls use, and caught the evening train to London for the BFI London Film Festival Awards.

The fourth season of Downton Abbey, which has already premiered in the United Kingdom, recently dealt with a very difficult topic.

Froggatt's character, Anna Bates, was raped by a visiting valet, a storyline that took many viewers by surprise.

According to the BBC, a warning was posted before the episode alerting viewers about the "upsetting scene."

"I was really proud of the show for tackling a subject like this," Frogatt said, according to the Daily Mail.  "It's a really brave thing to do and I really do believe that Julian Fellowes has written that in a way that is not gratuitous at all, he does very much go on to explore the emotional journey of Anna."

Fellowes also defended the broached topic.

"The whole point of the way we do things on Downton is we don't do them gratuitously," he said.

"If we'd wanted a sensational rape we could have stayed down in the kitchen with the camera during the whole thing and wrung it out."

The new season of Downton Abbey premieres stateside in January 2014.



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