Downton Abbey and Paddington star Hugh Bonneville shot down rumors that he is in the frame to appear in The Celebrity Traitors as he opened SXSW London with an onstage conversation on Monday.

“I keep being told I’m on Traitors, but no. I know Richard E. Grant is, because I tried to call him the other day… and his phone has been removed from him,” Bonneville replied to a question on whether he is set to appear in the show.

The UK star was in conversation with UK Trade Minister Chris Bryant, who also has strong connections to the UK’s creative industries through his previous post as Minister of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The talk kicked off the second edition of SXSW London running from June 1 to 6 in some 20 venues in the UK capital’s Shoreditch neighborhood. It also launched a four-day program championing UK creation and innovation overseen by the UK’s Department of Business of Trade at its UK House venue within the framework of SXSW London.

In keeping with the Austin SXSW original, SXSW London is bringing together professionals from the creative, tech and business worlds with a lineup encompassing a conference program with some 800 speakers; 40 film screenings and an extensive live music offering.

Deadline will also be out in force at the festival on June 2 with the Deadline Reality TV Summit, featuring speakers from Netflix, Two Four, Remarkable, UTAS UK, Fremantle and Studio Lambert.

Monday’s conversation between Byrant and Bonneville was very much about championing UK as a home to the creative industries.

Bryant announced Bonneville as one of UK’s biggest exports thanks to his roles as the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey and Henry Brown in Paddington, and revealed that they shared a tie through the fact they are both alumni of  the UK’s National Youth Theatre.

Bonneville addressed the UK’s position as a major international filming hub, noting he felt the mood in the industry was more positive in recent months after a lull in production but acknowledged fears over AI.

“Unlike the ministers, I have no statistics at my fingertips. I only have anecdotal evidence and feelings about where we are at… I was talking to a barista from the film world who said that since Downton Abbey, his work had grown and grown and then subsided last year, but he says there’s good prospects on the horizon. So that’s coming from the catering side of things, it’s a good barometer of where things are at,” said the actor.

Bonneville said he had felt nervous a year ago about the amount of studio capacity that was coming online in the UK, even if he acknowledged it was needed, pointing to the tricky logistics of shooting Paddington in Peru.

On the latter point, he suggested that only reason the shoot at the Sky Studios Elstree in late 2023 had been feasible was because the Wicked shoot was forced to shut down due to the writers’ and actors’ strikes.

“[It] is designed as a TV studio, so it was completely hopeless for a film unit which goes out on location every so often to do exterior shots. Luckily, the strikes came along. Wicked had to move out of the studio so we could park all our trucks in the Wicked studio, and were able to make it work. So, there was a weird uplift, in a sense, for our side of filming,” he said.

He noted Paddingon in Peru had been able to continue shooting while Wicked went offline because it was a French production produced by Studiocanal.

“We were able to work under our European contracts. It obviously decimated a huge number of jobs, not only in the U.S., but also here… it was a very delicate time,” he added.

“And yet, there was this building and building of new studios and contraction of stuff being made… I think we’re at a sort of crossroads where hopefully the pendulum that’s been swinging around in quite extreme directions will find a centre and obviously the big elephant in the room is AI.”

He noted how digital technology had been impacting the sector long before the rise of AI,  revealing that for Paddington in Peru none of the cast had set foot in Latin America.

“Because of this wonderful new digital age we live in, we never left the M25,” he said, referring to the orbital highway that encircles London.

“We didn’t have a lot of crossing of ravines and so on… it involved a platform and a couple of boxes. When Sony bought the American rights, they said you need to cut the budget by 70 million. The first thing to go was 200 people flying to South America,” he said.

“The crew did, I hasten to add. The second unit spent six weeks in the jungle, so every shot you see is genuine. It’s just that the actors were put on top afterwards.”

Tackling the current production malaise in L.A., Bonneville suggested Hollywood had priced itself out of the market.

“I love my colleagues in Hollywood… every producer there or location manager will tell you that Hollywood itself has traditionally priced itself almost out of the market. Runaway production has runaway for a reason. It goes to Canada, it goes to other parts of the States because of tax incentives and breaks,” he said.

“Hollywood has turned into a very expensive place to film… it’s not imploding, but it’s certainly contracting at a massive rate. And it’s a worrying time for my colleagues there, and I’m talking about everyone from the teamsters to the baristas.”

Bonneville, who hit London’s West End earlier this year in a limited run of Shadowlands, suggest cost issues were also weighing on Broadway, which was encouraging productions to begin their runs in London.

“I was talking to a West End producer who does a lot of work in New York, and they were saying that the effort to get a show on is at least double the cost of London, quite apart from exchange rate, the actual production is at least double, if not more, and therefore there is the pressure on returns and ticket prices and all that, you know,” he said.

“I mean ticket prices at Shadowlands weren’t exactly cheap, but I didn’t take a huge salary from it and I was determined that theatre needs to be accessible.

Questioned on his personal thoughts on AI and how he felt about his likeness being used in future AI productions, Bonneville said he was “nervous” about current developments but praised Micheal Caine, who recently licensed his voice to audio-focused generative AI company ElevenLabs.

“We’re very much in the foothills of this which will become a bigger experience for all. I’m nervous… Michael Caine has been very savvy in his twilight years. I believe he has licensed his voice, his iconic voice,” he said.

“Let’s face it, you can scrape anyone’s voice and use it with impunity and that’s the risk. I keeping being told, ‘They’re using your voice’… and then I listen to it and I can tell it’s not me, but it won’t be long before it will be me,” he said.

The key issue, he said, was ensuring that the people in the creative industries who make the original content get their share of the profits in the AI chain.

“I am nervous but obviously, I’m excited. We’ve already seen people like Paul Newman in adverts…. How do you copyright that and protect IP. The world of IP is the Wild West. Are you big enough to protect it, our we big enough to protect it? How much are the online platforms responsible… again these are bigger questions than me,” he concluded.

The actor noted that he was also concerned about the impact AI would have on other parts of the industry such as writing and post-production.

“You can’t trust what you’re looking for at on the screen, you literally don’t know what you’re looking a, whether it’s true or not…  until there is some clever form of trademark to verify what we’re watching as genuine content, and I think that should come from platform providers,” he said.

“We’re in dangerous cowboy territory at the moment and it’s up to people like you to help guide that,” he continued, addressing Bryant. “I’m not talking about legislation necessarily, or fines, but just to reassure us as human beings that want what we’re watching is real.”

Talking more generally about the success of Downton Abbey and Paddington and the image it presents of the UK to the world, Bonneville suggest that beyond the “idealised’ picture of the country, an element of benevolence lay in their appeal.

“It comes down to the writing and I think both Michael Bond as the writer and the creator of Paddington, as a character, the franchise, and again Julian Fellowes who wrote every episode of Downton the films, there’s an underlying benevolence, there is an underlying faith in the goodness of humanity,” he said.

“Julian Fellowes has often said, ‘I write from the position that people try to be good, they may do wron g things, but they try to be good’.  I think that’s one of the reasons why that show did bring generations together as appointment view television…  it was about romance, not sex, it was about tension, not violence. Albeit there were a couple of storylines that did break that.”

He suggested the character of Paddington had a similar draw.

“We’ve all been Paddington in a new school or a new home, a new town or in a new country, and needed the hand of friendship and the advice and help of others. And at the same time we all recognise the vulnerability of that creature and how we want to look after him. It’s the goodness of others around him that guide him through the mess and the mistakes that he makes and changes the world for the better.”

No discussion about Downton Abbey would be complete without a nod to the late actress Maggie Smith, who played the redoubtable Dowager Countess of Grantham. 

“She was an amazing figure to be around. She didn’t take any prisoners, she was no softy and you had to raise your game when she was on set… she was hardest against herself because she took the job on in her mid-70s when most people are quietening down. But she was absolutely active through and through,” he said.

Bonneville suggested an indication of her character was her close friendship with the acid-tongued actor Kenneth Williams.

“He was a wonderous wit but a dangerous lacerating wit… he was also a wonderful stage performer and a raconteur but he had this venomous streak that could absolutely fell someone at a thousand paces if he took offence.”

“They were very, very close. I can imagine them sitting in the corner of her green room just bitching about everyone… Julian loved writing her one liners and we all just gave her the space and it was just wonderful to behold. She was hard on herself and sometimes the lines wouldn’t work. But that’s the great thing about TV and film you just need the one take that works.”