– people who are rich today are generally rich in a way that was established in America in the 1880s, '90s, 1900s. It was different from Europe. Something like Newport would never have happened in any other country, where you have huge palaces, and then about 20 yards away, another huge palace, and 20 yards beyond that another huge palace. In England right up to the 1930s, when people made money, they would buy an estate of 5,000 acres and they'd have to look after Nanny. The Americans of the 1880s and '90s didn't want too much of that. In August 2016, Fellowes indicated that his plans for The Gilded Age would not overlap substantially with the characters in Downton Abbey since most of them would have been children in those earlier "prequel" decades. Writing for Creative Screenwriting, Sam Roads asked Fellowes, "Will there be any connection between The Gilded Age and Downton Abbey?" to which Fellowes stated: I can't see it really. Someone asked if you would you see any of the Downton characters, but most of them would be children. They said that Violet wouldn't be a child, and I replied that "Yes, I suppose you could see a younger Violet", and this became a newspaper story. "Violet comes from Downton to appear in The Gilded Age!" It might be fun, but I doubt at the beginning, because I want it to be a new show with new people. Fellowes wrote an adaptation of the novel Doctor Thorne by one of his favorite writers, Anthony Trollope. The ITV adaptation aired on 6 March 2016. A report in early September 2018 stated that Fellowes had two projects underway, both in development: the Netflix series The English Game and The Gilded Age for NBC. In May 2019, The Gilded Age moved to HBO. Films Fellowes wrote the script for Gosford Park, which won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen in 2002. He also won a Writers Guild of America award for it. In late 2005, Fellowes made his directorial début with the film Separate Lies, for which he won the award for Best Directorial Début from the National Board of Review. In 2009, Momentum Pictures and Sony Pictures released The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt, for which Fellowes wrote the original screenplay. Other screenwriting credits include Vanity Fair, The Tourist and From Time to Time, which