Do not mess with the Dowager.
Dame Maggie Smith had a bit of fun with a Jimmy Kimmel joke at the Emmys about her not showing up for the ceremony.
“If we call your name and you are not here to accept, the Emmy goes to the next name on the list,” Kimmel said during his opening monologue of the show. “It’s called the Maggie Smith Rule.”
After Smith won the outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for her role as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham on “Downton Abbey,” Kimmel rushed the stage.
“We’re not mailing this to her,” he said, grabbing the Emmy. “Maggie, if you want this it will be in the lost and found.”
On Monday, PBS tweeted her response in which she said she was “astonished and pleased to win the award.”
“I feel the Emmys have been overly generous to me,” she said. “If Mr. Kimmel could please direct me to the lost and found office I will try and be on the next flight.”
She signed off, “Love, Old Maggie.”