Beck/Smith Hollywood

“Downton Abbey’s” Lesley Nicol tells us she missed out on the big public clamor over the Season 3 finale in the U.K..  She was here in the States when she learned from her agent about fans being so upset over a character’s being killed off the show, there were complaints on the internet that the Christmas Day episode had ruined people’s holiday.

“This is a sticky one.  I value their passion but a part of me can’t help saying, ‘It’s a show.  It’s an actor,’” admits Nicol, known world-wide as blustery cook Mrs. Patmore.  “And an actor has to be allowed to move on if he wants to.’”

Nicol has no such desire, we’re glad to report.  “It’s lovely to work on this show.  It’s a privilege to be on it.  It’s a very good cast, a wonderful crew…We just want to make it better and better if we can.”  She was, however, here taking meetings with Hollywood executives about work outside of “Downton Abbey” — and tooling around town in a borrowed gold Jaguar.

“I was a nervous wreck because it’s a lovely car and the roads are quite scary in L.A., but I got used to it,” she says.

One result of her time here is that Nicol will be heading to Vancouver shortly to film an episode of ABC’s “Once Upon a Time.” After that, she flies to Chicago for a concert appearance.  And after that, it’s back to the U.K. to begin filming the fourth season of “Downton.”

Season 3 begins airing here Sunday (1/6) and there is much to relish, including the fun of Dame Maggie Smith crossing verbal swords with Shirley MacLaine, who has come aboard as the mother of American Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern).  For Nicol, Season 3 opens up even more aspects of Mrs. Patmore’s personality.  She will be seen at the side of rival Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), the head housekeeper, as Mrs. Hughes faces cancer.  And later in the season, it appears a bit of romance will be entering Mrs. Patmore’s life.

Nicol credits show creator Julian Fellowes for giving “everybody a proper journey.  He never leaves characters in one kind of groove.  He shows their different sides, just as we all have different sides to our characters.  To begin with, I was just this red-faced, angry bully.  But no one is just that.  The reason she behaved like that was, at that time, in that house, there would be no room for mistakes.  You couldn’t have people saying dinner at Downton Abbey wasn’t very good; it had to be the best show in town.”

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Everyone wants to know the location of Ground Zero in our ongoing financial disaster – the place this recession all began.  PBS’s “Frontline” provides an answer in its special, two-part, four-hour “Money, Power and Wall Street” (tomorrow, (4/24) and May 1).  It was in the ‘90s, at a swanky Boca Raton conclave of twentysomething brainiacs from JP Morgan, when the idea of credit default swaps was conceived.

“They were well-intentioned.  I would not say they were greedy,” observes revered broadcast journalist Martin Smith, speaking of that team of young turks.  He points out that the idea stemmed from wanting to insure themselves against loan risks.  The Frontline report tracks how trading risk as an insurance product began in a seemingly smart way, with corporate loans, then morphed into a market of its own that spread into mortgages, and ultimately the toxic loans that resulted in 2008’s financial crisis.  Smith is quick to credit Gillian Tett and her book, Fool’s Gold for the Boca Raton story.  (Tett appears on the docu.)

Smith has won numerous journalistic awards for his reporting on documentaries like “Gangs of Iraq,” “Beyond Baghdad” and “Return of the Taliban.”  The labyrinthine world of high finance is most different from war reporting, he tells us, in that “you don’t have to explain to people what happens when a bullet hits,” but the practices and terminology of finance require careful boiling down for non-expert viewers.  Smith makes the point that instead of merely chalking up financial matters as  arcane and complex – which many media members do – “it’s important that we, the public, understand them.  And we can understand,” he stresses.  “As someone pointed out, every time we buy a box of cereal, we’re paying a price that involves derivatives.”

Judging by the galloping first hour of “Money, Power and Wall Street,” “Frontline” has achieved its goals.  In fact, the fascinating saga has so much potential to be portrayed as a smart thriller, one wonders whether Hollywood will soon be looking to dramatize it.

Jordin Sparks segues from the New Kids On the Block/Backstreet Boys tour to a special engagement in Washington, D.C. this coming week, performing on PBS’s live “A Capitol Fourth” Independence Day celebration concert. (Check local listings.) Talk about a sudden change.

“It’s going to be so different — from the wardrobe to the audience to the stage. The thing that’s going to be the same is that I’m going to try to perform the best that I can,” says Jordin, who recently shed 30 pounds and is looking gorgeous. She’s singing “Beauty and the Beast” — accompanying a dance by Mark Ballas and Chelsie Hightower in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Disney animated classic. She is also set to sing the national anthem — one of the two most nerve-wracking performances she can imagine, she says, the other being a return to “American Idol.”

“I’ll be on the on the steps of the Capitol building, in our nation’s Capitol, singing the National Anthem on the day of our nation’s independence,” she points out. It doesn’t get much more American than that. The concert, hosted by Jimmy Smits, also features Steve Martin, Josh Groban, Matthew Morrison, Little Richard and Broadway’s Kelli O’Hara.

At 21, the youngest-ever “American Idol” winner (she won at age 17) feels her newly-svelte shape is part of a metamorphosis she’s undergoing that has to do with, well, growing up. “I’m just now discovering who I am and what I can do. It’s a transition. I’m coming into my own. I sort of have a different approach onstage now. The dancing, the choreography is definitely different from what I did last year,” she tells us. “It’s been really fun, discovering who I am and what I can do.”

Jordin Sparks I Am Woman

Her saucy “I Am Woman,” with its driving beat, is completely different for her, Jordin points out. It’s also completely different from the Helen Reddy feminist anthem of the same name decades ago. (Sample lyric: “It ain’t easy walkin’ in stilettos, but somebody gotta do it.”) Combined with the right video — one has yet to be made — it could capture the zeitgeist for the young 2010s woman in a big way. Jordin loves seeing girls get up and dance to it at concerts, as they have been.

She’ll soon take off on a string of one-off dates, then a Euro trip.  As for what’s next after that? “I did Broadway for a couple of months last fall — In the Heights. I loved it. I’d love to do Broadway again if the right part and story came along.” She’s also been working on her acting skills, and says, “I’d love to do a TV show or a movie.”