*New* Lotte Verbeek's Interview With Vulture

From Vulture:

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I know it’s hard to dance around some of the spoilers …
It is. I mean, it’s harder than dancing in a forest naked! [Laughs.]

And how was that?
That is very freeing. Everybody should try it sometime. I mean, the complication was more the [pregnant] belly, because as much as I was wearing close to nothing, you kind of didn’t want to give everything away just yet, but you did want to see the belly. So I would say I was just kind of figuring out how that works while moving. We had a couple of rehearsals [with a choreographer] to figure that out. It worked out so well! It was a dream scene to do.

More after the jump!

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More so than yelling, “I’m a servant of Satan!”?
Oh gosh! When I read those lines, I was like, “Oh my God, how are you going to … ?” There’s hardly any way to be subtle about that, right? We’ve seen Geillis being someone you have to read between the lines, but that is pretty expressive. I enjoyed that. I liked that.

Up until now, she’s been subtle, coy, almost teasing, like, “You have a secret. I have a secret. Let’s figure out if your secret is my secret.”
And then that changes. Once you think you know her, you turn out to not know her at all. And hopefully you start to feel for her, because it turns out she’s an idealist, in the truest sense of the word. She believes in this more than anything else, and it means more to her than her own life, even. And she and Dougal are of like minds. They’re both rebels, in their own way.

What might clue you in before she makes her grand Satan speech is that her vocal affect and her vocabulary changes. Just a few episodes ago, Jamie had to ask Claire, “What does fuckingmean?” because it wasn’t a commonly used word in that time. But Geillis says, “Looks like I’m going to a fucking barbecue,” so that anachronism is a tip-off.
That’s what I really like about the writing, because it’s not so spelled out in front of us. It’s little hints. Bread crumbs. I hope the audience will be like, “Oh, I get it. Makes sense.” You trust the audience to be smart enough to get it, you know? And even if you’re not getting it, it’s fine, because it’s a bit of a mystery to indulge in. When Claire and Geillis have a moment to themselves, she asks, “Why are you here?” And she’s stunned that there is no bigger plan, because Geillis’s life is all about the greater plan. It’s almost grotesque, or grandiose, to think that she can change the course of history. We think of Claire as being the more altruistic one, because she’s a healer, but it turns out that Geillis is ultimately the one who’s altruistic. She saves her friend’s life.

But she’s also a murderer.
Because she’s an idealist. And Arthur Duncan, on a Darwinian level, might not have been the last man standing, anyway. So it wouldn’t have been much of a loss.

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Both you and Carice van Houten are playing redheaded witches of a sort, her red priestess Melisandre on Game of Thrones, your “confessed” witch on Outlander. You’re both Dutch …
Are you saying we’re good at witchcraft in Holland? [Laughs.]

No, but I thought it was interesting considering Geillis in the Outlander books isn’t a redhead …
At first I was like, “I don’t see why they would cast me, if they’re looking for a tall, blonde, green-eyed Scottish woman!” I mean, you could dye your hair, which I don’t really like doing. It was really lovely, though, because one of the producers said, “It’s kind of exciting. You really want to find the right person for the role, and I knew it from the second I saw your photo.” And I think in this case, it helps to be a redhead, because that’s considered to be exotic.

I don’t know if they’ve entirely mapped out what is going to happen in season two yet, but at some point, they might show the 1960s, and we could potentially see Geillis before she goes back in time.
That is true. I remember some costume talk about the 1960s. Miniskirts! I’m all about the miniskirts. I love that. I like the Twiggy look. Some go-go boots would be nice!