Kitty Despard

Kitty Despard arrives in Cornwall as the wife of Ross Poldark's old friend from his soldiering days abroad, a woman of warmth and quiet confidence in a world quick to judge her by her origins. She is devoted to her husband and unbothered by the stares she draws, meeting suspicion with steady grace.

Kerri McLean gives Kitty a composure that never tips into stiffness, letting her hold her own against the show's more established society without seeming to perform courage. The character works because Poldark treats her prejudice-facing entrance plainly, as fact rather than spectacle, and lets her personality, not her circumstance, carry the scenes.