Downtown Alley

This is a very funny segment Stephen Colbert did a couple of years ago when three actors from Downton Abbey were guests on his show -- Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville and Allen Leech.  Colbert suggests that one reason the show works so well for American audiences is because the high-toned British accents sound SO classy.  So he brings out pages of a scene and asks them to do it with American accents.

Usually such things are set up beforehand, and this may have been.  But from their reactions, I get the sense that they maybe were only told part of what might happen, but not all.  And regardless of what they knew beforehand, the result -- which could have been a quick laugh and that's it -- actually is a bit of a hoot.

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