Poldark returns
You can expect flesh in the new series
Kyle Soller is a rare breed of actor – an American who frequently finds himself playing Brits. He grew up in Connecticut, but moved to London ten years ago to take up a place at Rada, where he met his wife, the British stage actress Phoebe Fox. In the past five years he has played such lofty roles as Gaveston in Edward II and Clifford in the BBC’s adaptation of Henry VI – and tonight we will see him don a flouncy white shirt when he returns to our screens in Poldark, the bodice-ripping remake of the costume drama from the Seventies.
Soller, 33, plays Francis, the muchmaligned cousin to Aidan Turner’s Ross who – rather awkwardly – married Ross’s sweetheart when everyone thought he had died in the American Revolutionary War. He is a slightly wet character who spent his younger years in the shadow of his more successful cousin and feels life has dealt him a bad hand. “I really sympathise with Francis,” says Soller. “I think in the first series he found himself in an unbelievably difficult situation where his closest friend who he thought had died came back, and there was the shock and relief of that happening.
“But then tempering that with trying to explain how he’s now engaged to his cousin’s truest love, who is a woman who Francis never in his wildest dreams thought he would be able to deserve.
“Within all the floundering and trying to find himself was, I thought, this sense that maybe he wasn’t worth what Ross was and maybe he didn’t live up to his father’s expectations. He loves Elizabeth so much but his own inflated sense of pride gets in the way.”
Soller has been blown away by the success Poldark has enjoyed since the first series aired last autumn. It has been shown in his home country, where Downton
Abbey became a such a huge hit over its six-year run. Is he expecting a similar reaction from an American audience to
Poldark? “Well, there’s usually a build with these things...” he’s begins to clam up, as if talking about it would jinx it. “I think it did really well but it’s too early to say because we’ve only had one season.”
How could an American audience resist Ross’s frankly magnificent (if painted-on) abs, smokey eyes and frosty stare? Aidan Turner’s topless scything in the first series became legendary, and Soller promises me that even Francis “shows a bit of ankle” in this next series – but he thinks it’s the rugged Cornish backdrop that sets Poldark apart from other costume dramas. He says the cast fell in love with the area while they were filming, and would regularly frequent the local Cornish pubs when not on set. “You have a part of the country that maybe is not explored that much in period drama,” he says. “Cornwall is this wild, unrelenting, beautiful, unpredictable place that informs all of the characters. “It’s not as predictable, it’s a real slice of the society as well. It’s not just another Upstairs Downstairs.” Did he find it tricky to get his head round the subtleties of the British class system, which are everpresent in our period dramas? “Preparing to be a member of the English gentry in 18th-century Cornwall, and familiarising myself with the different kind of class system was interesting and just awful, actually.
“When I first got here I thought the class system was something archaic that wasn’t still alive and breathing, but it is, very much so, which was strange to discover.
“When playing a British character, I definitely say more British things around the house like ‘bin’ and ‘washing up’, rather than ‘do the dishes’ and ‘take out the trash’.”
He had plenty of opportunity to perfect his accent at Rada which, he says, he attended “because I wanted classical stage training in the best place in the world”.
In fact, he’s now in danger of becoming overly Anglicised. “There was definitely a period when I was starting to say ‘sorry’ rather than ‘excuse me’. You say ‘sorry’ before you even say ‘hello’ sometimes. That’s got to do something to you psychologically.”
And with British actors like Damian Lewis, Tom Hiddleston and Dominic West taking the US by storm at the moment, Soller’s efforts on the British stage and screen could be seen to be redressing the balance. “Yes they actually sent me over for this very purpose. It was a covert operation to upset the rhythm,” he deadpans. “It’s amazing the number of British actors who have gone over and smashed it, and it really doesn’t go both ways.
“I don’t know about what the UK does differently in terms of training an actor, but the history and legacy of its stage actors and the craft associated with learning that technique, you can see a difference.”
Would he move back to the States if work took him or Fox – who earlier this year starred in A View from the
Bridge on Broadway – over there? “Insert massive pause,” he says. Certainly, he says, he would find it hard to move back if Donald Trump was elected.
“It would change a lot for sure. When I first came over here we had just re-elected George W Bush and I felt really uneasy being an American, feeling like I was somehow a spokesperson for my country. The only way around that is to be involved and make your vote heard.”
Though he is itching to get back to the stage – his “first passion” – Soller has started shooting a Sergio G Sanchez film in Barcelona, which is due for release next year.
For now, though, he is looking forward to seeing how fans react to the new series of Poldark, and seems more than content with his life in London. “Some people find there’s more opportunity for them in the States. But I think there is a lot of opportunity over here,” he says.
“And it feels like home.”