Here’s part of an interview Ron D. Moore did with Collider:
The first season of Outlander is split in two, and you ended the first half on a cliffhanger. Was there much discussion about where you could leave that first half to keep people waiting in anticipation of the second half, but not have them be too angry that they don’t want to tune back in? Was it your decision where to leave it, or did the network also weigh in on that?
MOORE: I pitched it that way, pretty early on. Because we’re going from a book, that moment of Claire being held by Jack, and Jamie appearing in the window, as soon as I read it on the page, I was like, “Well, that’s a great cliffhanger,” and it happened to fall about mid-way through the book. It was a natural point. So, when we were putting the season together, I said, “Okay, in Episode 8, let’s say that that’s the cliffhanger,” and the network agreed. It was a done deal. It seemed obvious to all of us that that was the best. It literally was a cliffhanger moment and a good place to stop.
Read more after the jump!
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The wedding episode was such an intimate and very sexual episode. Did you have to do much negotiation on that, to push it as far as you did, or was that surprisingly smooth, as far as what you were able to do?
MOORE: There was no real issue with the network, whatsoever. Starz is a premium cable network and they pride themselves on pushing boundaries. They just said, “Go as far as you want to go. We’re not afraid of it. We want it to just work.” I just took the approach, with the director and the writer and the actors, and said, “Okay, this will be graphic, but I want it to feel authentic. I don’t want to do typical TV nonsense where you’ve got the big drape and the candle, and it’s soft-core porn. I want this to feel like two people having sex for the first time, in these circumstances. The first time they have sex, it ain’t gonna go so well. And the second time, it can be more charged. And then, it’s going to move to something more intimate.” I wanted a sense of truth to it, and I just kept emphasizing that we were going for reality. We weren’t going for romantic. I wanted it to feel real, and they delivered on that. It was a pleasure to cut the show and to mix it. I could watch the footage and go, “Yeah, this is good. This isn’t just prurient. It’s not just trying to put naked people on the screen. It’s actually about something. Each of these moments that we were having actors take their clothes off, has meaning to it. It actually does drive the story forward. It really is important to show.
Read the full interview over at Collider here.
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