Here is Ron D. Moore’s interview with Deadline
From Deadline:
The first season of the Starz series based on the best selling historical novels of Diana Gabaldon came to a bare, bold, bloody and brutal end tonight. With a strong August 9 2014 start to a 16-episode run that has seen Outlander average about 4.9 million viewers an episode across various platforms, tonight’s To Ransom A Man’s Soul finale will certainly have a lot of them talking – and not just for the stampeding herd that helped free 16th century Highlander Jamie Fraser from Wentworth Prison and the sadistic clutches of the Tobias McKenzie played Black Jack Randall.
Read more after the jump!
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With the now number #2 most subscribed premium cabler pinning some of their Emmy hopes on Sam Heughan’s starz-1-logoperformance as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe’s portrayal of the time traveling Claire Beauchamp Randall, the Ronald D. Moore led series went to a some very dark place within the walls of the prison the past couple of episodes. Where devout Outlander viewers, which are 59% female, have become used to stimulating dalliances between Jamie and Claire, tonight’s finale was the ugly flip side of that love. It was a relentless raping and torturing of the Highlander by Black Jack in an effort to break him and by extension the Scots’ war against the English. Even once Jamie’s friends break him out, and the cows seemingly flatten Black Jack (read the books or wait until next season for the outcome there), the fresh scars and old wounds continue to run deep for both husband and wife, despite Claire’s 20th century training as a World War 2 nurse.
The end of the finale saw the now expecting duo off to France and the second season of the quickly renewed series centering on Gabaldon’s second Outlander book Dragonfly In Amber, the show is about to undergo some big changes. To that end, executive producer Moore, who co-wrote tonight’s Anna Foerster directed episode, explained why the last part of Season 1 went to the harsh places it did and what the future is going to look like for the series in Season 2 and perhaps beyond.
DEADLINE: There has been a lot of sex on Outlander this first season but the mutilation of Jamie’s body and psyche in the finale by Black Jack Randall with the prolonged rape, torture, branding and hallucinations was something very different and very hard to watch. Do you expect a strong or even negative reaction from viewers for being so explicit and brutal?
MOORE: I always knew that our finale was going to be controversial. It was a brutal chapter of the book so we felt obligated to convey that part of the story, and it’s absolutely a brutal, chilling, part of the tale. It’s dealing with, really, tricky subject matter, it’s very graphic and it’s difficult stuff. And we approached it in that light. Now it’s airing when people are already talking about a rape on another show, and having a big cultural conversation about it. It’ll be interesting to see how people react.
DEADLINE: But you know some viewers will be shocked, right?
MOORE: If you watched last week’s episode, I don’t think you’re going to be taken unawares by this week’s episode. Certainly fans of the book absolutely know where it’s going and hopefully those who haven’t read the books, especially after watching last week’s episode, are not going to be taken completely unawares by Outlander 2014 s1 15what happens to Jamie.
You know in Episode 6, The Garrison Commander, we did the whole thing about the flashback with the flogging told from Jack Randall’s point of view. We were getting inside of his head, and that was pretty graphic, and pretty disturbing too. We laid pieces along the way to give viewers fair warning that this season was going to darker places.
Read the rest of the interview at the source
Reblogged this on Ana Fraser Lallybroch Blog.