Why Isn’t Matthew Goode in Downton Abbey 3?

Henry Talbot is gone for good. He’s not going the way of Matthew Crawley (Lady Mary’s first husband, who was killed in a car accident) but Talbot (Mary’s second husband) is definitely not coming back to Downton Abbey.

While Matthew Goode, who played Tablot, made an appearance in the first Downton Abbey film, Goode has not appeared in either of the sequels. It simply came down to scheduling issues.

For the first sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era, he was working on the series The Offer, and could not fit in a cameo. Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) explains his absence by saying her husband is traveling the world racing cars, and doesn’t want to come home.

This time, Goode wasn’t able to make it work due to a knee operation around the same time, according to the Radio Times, as well scheduling issues around filming for his Netflix show, Dept. Q., Goode also told Deadline in June that he had spoken with Dockery “at length” about being in the movie, but it didn’t work out in the end.

“I think we were going to try and ask for a slight rewrite or something or other. And then eventually it was just that they were moving ahead,” Goode said “It was a big racecourse day, so the thing was booked, and I was never going to be able to do it, which was a shame because I love that cast.”

Here is where it gets spoiler-y. Offscreen, Goode is still on very happy terms with the Downton cast, per the Deadline interview. The same cannot be said onscreen for Mr. and Lady Talbot. To explain Henry Talbot’s absence, it’s revealed early in the movie that Lady Mary are divorcing, which is quite the scandal in the London social scene, setting the stage for most of the movie.

The original Downton Abbey series as well as the first two movies are available to stream on Peacock.

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