Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport on Friendship, Acting, and The Forsytes
Longtime friends Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport teamed up the in new period drama The Forsytes, and in March of 2026, the duo chatted with MASTERPIECE (and ribbed each other) about their hilarious shared history, their on-set joys, and the rivaling brothers they play in The Forsytes.
Find out all the ways to watch The Forsytes, airing Sundays, now through April 26, on MASTERPIECE on PBS.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photo: Kristina Bumphrey
MASTERPIECE:
You’ve been friends for a very long time. How did that play out on the set of The Forsytes?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Stephen Moyer: We’ve known each other an extremely long while, almost 30 years at this point, and there is a great joy to be had from being dear friends and being able to say anything that one really wants to in the other one's company to either make them laugh or make them angry or to try and get a rise out of them. There was a moment during Season 2 where we were in the background, and I haven't laughed that much on camera for a long, long, long time. We knew we were in deep background and we knew we were out of focus–
Jack Davenport: No, we're not. I've seen it. I started jabbing him in the chest with my finger for no good reason, just because it amused me, and it started making him laugh, and they used it.
Stephen Moyer: Luckily, it's deep background.
MASTERPIECE:
We’ll keep our eyes peeled for this in Season 2! How did this 30 year friendship, that now sees you playing rivals and brothers on The Forsytes, begin?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Stephen Moyer: Well…my first job out of drama school was the musical Oliver! at the National Theater of Wales—I was playing Noah Claypole and different bits and pieces in the show—and next to us in the little black box theater was a production of Hamlet, which had the lovely Rhys Ifans and the amazing Toby Jones, and [indicates Davenport] this guy.
Jack Davenport: I'm not sure if we met then, but we were definitely in the same theater bar nightly. And then eight years later, we did a TV series together in London, and we've been friends ever since.
MASTERPIECE:
This was Ultraviolet, and Stephen, it was your first run playing a vampire?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Jack Davenport: I like to say I broke him in. He sort of owes it all to me.
Stephen Moyer: He was very gentle with me. And funnily enough, we were playing best friends, both of us vampire hunter policemen, but he didn't know that I was a vampire.
Jack Davenport: It was a high concept show.
Stephen Moyer: It was a good show. But the interesting thing was that during that gig, we both screen tested and met Anthony Minghella for The Talented Mr. Ripley, and he got it. But we were the last two for that, and we didn't know.
Jack Davenport: It's a cruel business.
Stephen Moyer: I looked like Tina Turner during Ultraviolet. And I think it went against me when I read for it.
Jack Davenport: That's probably true. He did have a very blown out look.
Stephen Moyer: Yeah, there was a blown-out, windy scene, I looked like Mufasa. But do you know how I knew it was him? And this is honestly true—when I arrived at Anthony's office, I looked into the window of the door to see if I could see who was meeting Anthony before me, and all I could see was a little dancing foot that was crossed over a leg. And I was like, “That's %#&!ing Jack Davenport's foot, I know it is!” I knew it was his foot.
MASTERPIECE:
Jack, your Forsytes character, James, is quite funny, but he doesn't know he's funny. Are you having a ball playing him?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Jack Davenport: I am. I really like playing morally superior, cruel buffoons who have no idea what asses they are and behave like the world owes them a favor from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. And yes, because I know who he is, I want him to be the most appalling version of himself.
But the other thing that I should add is that the most interesting character in the books is arguably my son Soames. He's a very complex, quite dark character, and there was a part where one needs to show why the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And so yeah, I lean into that. And Debbie [Horsfield, the writer], God love her, writes me such good unintentionally funny things to say and do, because there's that awful sort of pomposity where you want anyone to slap him across the face and be like, "Oh, just shut up." And it's very good fun to do that.
MASTERPIECE:
Stephen, can you share how you came to be playing piano in The Forsytes, and what that means for your character Jolyon Senior?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Stephen Moyer: During the very first Zoom meeting [for the show], they knew that I played the piano and they asked me if I would do it and I said, "I am not a pianist, absolutely not a pianist." And they were like, "Yeah, but we know that you play." And I was like, "I am not a pianist." And they said, "Yeah, but we know that you've played in (so-and-so) and (so-and-so)…” So the joke I've been making is that when Ryan Gosling did La La Land, he had three months of piano at 10 hours a day, and I basically got one hour with five Chopin pieces. It was hard.
But in how that relates to Jolyon Senior, I think that Debbie cleverly created the idea that Jolyon Senior has another place that he can escape to within himself, which is music.
MASTERPIECE:
It's been suggested, Stephen, that you are a notorious or maybe gleeful prop collector from places that you’ve worked–
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Jack Davenport: I think the word is “thief.”
MASTERPIECE:
Jack, what do you think that Stephen would have coveted from the Forsytes set?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Jack Davenport: My talent.
Stephen Moyer: Couldn't find it.
Jack Davenport: Well, there are beautiful objects everywhere, and Debbie's created this scenario where they literally live next door to each other, so there's a lot of competitive home improvement that goes on. And in our house, in the second season—and this speaks to a moment in Victorian England, where there was a kind of Chinoiserie craze among rich people. Everything was Chinese. And there's a lot of heavy brown Victorian furniture—he's never tried to steal a chair, but, but he's probably snaffled a pocket watch or two, I wouldn't know.
Stephen Moyer: I collect antique letter openers, and this has been quite a long while. And if I see one on set–
Jack Davenport: It's gone.
Stephen Moyer: –it's gone. But The Forsytes is a little bit prior to that kind of letter opening.
Jack Davenport: And we Forsytes had someone to open letters for us.
MASTERPIECE:
Can you share a favorite moment that you had together during the making of The Forsytes season one?
Stephen Moyer & Jack Davenport:
Jack Davenport: They're all quite fun. We are of a particular generation and show business was a bit more rough and tumble when we were coming up—and that's not necessarily a good thing, but it just was—and because we're so familiar with one another, as Steve said, it's like a safe harbor to throw anything against the window that you want. I know he's not going to get upset. The fun is seeing how far we can go before it all falls apart, really.
And so in a big family show like The Forsytes, you've got very different personalities with which to work—and everyone's lovely, by the way. But here’s the thing: You go to sleep one day and you wake up and you're playing the dads or the granddads. It's like a minute ago, we all had manes of hair and big handguns and we were killing vampires, and now we're dressed like undertakers and selling stocks. So I don't know. Do you have a favorite moment of me, Steve?
Stephen Moyer: I really enjoy working and I really enjoy not working. So for example, this year I haven't done anything yet and I‘v have enjoyed not doing anything. I've been with my kids, getting them to school, cooking, doing all of that, walking the dogs, very, very happily. But knowing I'm about to start a job, there's a great joy in that. And I really enjoy actors, directors, I really love crew, the whole mechanics of how the sausage is made fascinates me.
And so for me, yes, it can be annoying getting up extremely early and putting on these silly undertakers garbs, as he says, but I love working and I love being with other people who are creating. Honestly, most days are hilarious, and we have a Wordle war that we do. And a lot of the work includes sitting about, and that is often the best fun bit, too. People moan about all this but I really love it. So we're very lucky to do what we get to do.
Jack Davenport: And I suppose, one of the only few advantages of experience is experience. And if I'm honest—just to tack onto what Steve said about when we're all together, sitting around while they set things up—when I first read The Forsytes, because I know how the sausage is made, I wondered if I really wanted to do it. Not because I didn't like the writing, but I was like, "If it's not breakfast for 12, it's a committee meeting for 20 or a party for 60." There are two-handed scenes, but there aren't that many. And it's quite a grind to those big party scenes because you've got to catch so many moments—there's a look from over there that goes over there.
And so that on paper could be a bit of a drag, but a) they do it very quickly to these many, many cameras, and b) it is a very lovely group. I mean, I pity the poor first assistant director because we don't stop talking, we don't stop giggling, we don't stop mucking about. We're unruly kindergartners really, and what could be nicer?
