‘The Forsytes’ Star Explains What Irene Was Really Thinking Watching Soames Play Polo: “Gentle With That Horse”

The Forsytes — Masterpiece on PBS’s sparkling new version of John Galsworthy’s classic Forsyte Saga novels — shows us a side of Soames Forsyte (Joshua Orpin) we’ve never seen before. An athletic side!

**Spoilers for The Forsytes Episode 1, now streaming on PBS Passport**

In The Forsytes Episode 1, Irene Heron (Millie Gibson) and her stepmother Clarissa (Fiona Button) visit Soames while he’s wrapping up a polo match. As Soames himself puts it, sitting at in an office all day can feel stuffy. The upshot of this is that we get a hero shot of Soames wearing a tight polo shirt while riding a horse. It’s a far different version of a character usually found selling stocks or lurking at fancy dinner parties.

In fact, it seems that this version of Soames could honestly appeal to Irene. For maybe the first time in The Forsytes, Irene looks — dare we say it? — kind of interested in the businessman.

“Yeah, she’s only human,” The Forsytes star Joshua Orpin teased when he and co-star Millie Gibson visited DECIDER earlier this month.

“Yeah, she’s repulsed by him in the books, as well,” Gibson said. “So I was like, ‘How’s this gonna work?'”

Gibson went on to explain that what Irene sees in this scene isn’t Soames’s athleticism, but his heart. Instead of noticing what her suitor was doing on the polo field, she was watching him with his horse.

Photos: PBS

“I think that scene in particular, I think Irene is really attracted to gentle souls and the souls that speak to her in a way that no one else does,” Gibson said.

“Even though it’s such like a cliche, he’s just patting a horse, but stuff like that, it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s his sensitive side,'” she said. “Because she has only seen like his business kind of profile at this point. So I think seeing that it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, okay, maybe has a bit more layers to him.'” 

Orpin said, “Gentle with that horse.”

“Gentle with that horse,” Gibson said. “Yeah.”

Soames, meanwhile, is laser-focused on Irene. According to Orpin, Irene is the first person whom Soames Forsyte has ever loved.

“There’s a bit of murky backstory that I’ve come up with in my head that maybe took place before we meet Soames in The Forsyte Saga,” Orpin said. “I think he’s dabbled [in romance], but I don’t think he’s ever felt what he feels for Irene.”

To find out what happens next between Soames and Irene, you’ll have to keep watching The Forsytes, either Sundays on Masterpiece on PBS or streaming on PBS Passport.