Get to Know The Forsytes' Joshua Orpin
Get to know Australian actor Joshua Orpin, who traded in his Titans Superboy suit for a Victorian frock coat in the sumptuous new period drama The Forsytes, where he plays the romantic yet repressed Soames Forsyte reimagined for a new audience. Read Orpin's March 2026 interview with MASTERPIECE to discover his insights on his character, how cast mate Millie Gibson can always get him laughing, and his experiences making Season 1 of a show so heartily embraced that it’s already set to begin filming its third season!
Photo: Kristina Bumphrey
MASTERPIECE:
Soames is an extremely complicated character. What was it like for you to portray him with all these nuances?
Joshua Orpin:
I think the intricacies and the nuance and those gritty details are what make a character so much fun to play, so I really relish the opportunity to play characters that are written with depth, as Soames has been written by our wonderful writer, Debbie Horsfield. She's really reinvented Soames for a modern audience, and imbued him with a real three-dimensionality that was just such a pleasure to work on, for me.
MASTERPIECE:
Is there any Soames in you?
Joshua Orpin:
Yeah, I think part of my task as an actor really is to identify those aspects that I have in common with a character, and where we diverge and converge. And with Soames, obviously, there are a lot more divergences. But what do we have in common? I would say we're both quite ambitious. I have a pragmatic streak. I can sometimes follow the logic of a problem, and maybe have a little too much disregard for the emotional emotional fallout of a problem that I'm trying to solve in my life. So in little things like that, I was finding commonalities.
MASTERPIECE:
What did the cast get up to when the cameras weren't rolling–did you get to have some fun together?
Joshua Orpin:
Absolutely. We shot The Forsytes in Bristol, which is a lovely city in England. And because of the nature of that place, it's firstly so beautiful just aesthetically–the buildings, the water–and then culturally, it's very vibrant. There are universities there, so there are a lot of young people, and therefore a lot of bars and pubs and really nice restaurants. We had some lovely dinners out overlooking the bridge and the gorge there.
Also, we have a lot of big group scenes in this show where we're at an event–we're at the opera or a ball together or some such–so there are plenty of opportunities for us to hang out–we don't really need to leave work a lot of the time to do it. I think there was some trauma bonding, which I found funny, over dealing with being in those big ballroom scenes with a bunch of people, and we're all overheating, and we're sitting in a tent in between shots just sweating, and just trying to make the best of it and remember how lucky we all are to be there.
MASTERPIECE:
Was it great fun playing rivals and enemies with Danny Griffin?
Joshua Orpin:
Yeah, I think that a character like Soames really lends himself to antagonism, and he will identify which of the people in his life are obstacles, preventing him from achieving his goals. And he'll target and go after those people, and he's ruthless. And unfortunately, Danny's character, Jolyon, is the recipient of a lot of that vitriol from Soames.
But personally, for me, that's heaps of fun. It's great to have an excuse to get stuck into somebody and really go for it. There are a few instances in Season 1 when we get to see Soames go off the leash a little bit, and maybe lose his temper, or his frustration and anger get the better of him. Those little moments are a lot of fun to play.
MASTERPIECE:
What was it like to work with Jack Davenport, who plays your father? And was he just hilarious?
Joshua Orpin:
He is a delight to work with. I feel so privileged to get to work with him and to have him play my father in this show. I've learned so much from him as a performer, and as an actor, and as a professional in this environment. He's obviously very experienced, but he's an incredibly skilled actor and I think he’s fantastic in The Forsytes. He almost steals every scene that he's in, in my opinion. But off camera, he's hilarious. He's just really sharp and has got a great sense of humor, just a great wit, and he definitely has us laughing a lot during the work day. So I'm very, very lucky to have Jack.
MASTERPIECE:
You’re well known among fans of the show Titans, part of the DC comic universe, but perhaps newer to our period drama fans. Could you share any hobbies or interests about yourself, so we can get to know one of our leading men a little better?
Joshua Orpin:
Well, I’m a bit obsessed with movies, which obviously goes hand-in-hand with becoming an actor. As I was growing up, our family owned a bunch of video rental stores back in the day. It was a chain called Video Ezy, which is an equivalent to Blockbuster, and I think at one point when I was a kid, we had seven of those stores around Melbourne, and my dad and my grandfather were the managers. And for me as a kid, I was in heaven. I would run around just picking movies off the shelf. I'd watch anything that I saw. Maybe I've got the nostalgia goggles on right now, but before the days of streaming, you'd just walk around the video store and you'd see a cover and you'd go, "Oh, that looks interesting," and you'd just watch it with no preconception of what it was. So that was basically my childhood. I was doing that all the time, so I had this love of movies, which then became my career, and I'm so lucky for that and grateful for that.
I like playing video games, and I think this isn't new to people who are already aware of me from things like Titans, but I am a bit of a geek in that I grew up on the comic books, reading about superheroes. And so that kind of thing, all the geek stuff, the comic books, video games, board games, movies, and other hobbies, come and go. My main hobby is playing with my two crazy cats at home. Because I'm lucky enough to be traveling around the world for work at the moment, when I'm home, I have less time for hobbies, and my time is more spent just hanging out with my friends and family and my cats.
MASTERPIECE:
Are you as obsessed with your cats as your Forsytes mom, Emily, is with her dog, Cyril?
Joshua Orpin:
Absolutely, shamelessly so. They have their own Instagram page. If I were to share the contents of my camera role–and I'm sure most people can relate to this–it's like 95% pictures of one or the other of my cats. And most of the interactions I have at home with my girlfriend are just, "Hey, look at what the cat's doing." It is all consuming. And I know that non-pet owners may shake their heads at that, but that's the reality that I live in.
MASTERPIECE:
In a super charming Forsytes promotional video that you and Millie Gibson did for the UK, Millie was teasing you about your Australian accent...
Joshua Orpin:
What you see there in that clip is but a small glimpse into the experience of working with Millie. It's like that everywhere I go, there's an echo in the room. I'll say something and she'll just parrot it back in that horrific Australian accent, if you can even call it that. [Laughs] I guess I just have to deal with that.
MASTERPIECE:
She said that you when she's in her posh costumes and then she breaks out talking in her Mancunian accent, it would crack you up. Did you tease her back about that?
Joshua Orpin:
Oh, absolutely. It's so funny. Honestly, there were moments I remember, shooting montage scenes, for example, in Season 1, where there's no dialogue, but we're trying to capture moments of Soames and Irene talking together or laughing together. We've got the director in our ear giving us little cues and prompts, "Okay, now make each other laugh." And a surefire way for that to happen would be Millie to start speaking in her Mancunian accent, and that would send me every time, I would just start laughing. So if you ever see a clip from the show and there's no dialogue, maybe there's music playing and it's me and Millie laughing together, odds are that it's because she's just been speaking in quite a heavy Northern English accent.
