Here is an interview from Vulture with Ron D. Moore, Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan and Tobias Menzies.
From Vulture:
Spoilers ahead for the season one finale of Outlander.
Read more after the jump!
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When we first see Jamie and Jack in the season finale of Outlander, the two men are naked, in bed together as morning breaks — though from the look on Jamie’s face, he probably didn’t get any sleep at all. After a long night with his nemesis, he appears devastated, ruined, lost. “I didn’t want to do this kind of nudity until it had a great effect,” actor Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie, told us. “Hopefully it’s a shock, rather than something pleasant to watch. It’s like, ‘Oh my God — what’s happened to this person?”
“It’s so sad to watch!” agreed actress Caitriona Balfe.
The opening scene is designed to shock the portion of the audience who, after episode 15’s ominous ending, might have hoped someone would come in and save Jamie before he suffered any further. “A chunk of them were going, ‘Oh, that’s not going to happen,'” showrunner Ron D. Moore said. “‘Angus is going to come in, flying on a rope or something, and it’s all going to be okay.'”
And why shouldn’t we think that? Didn’t that happen for Claire, when Black Jack was about to rape her during the season-break cliff-hanger? Hasn’t every rape attempt on the show been averted so far, at the last moment? Yet all along, Moore has been trying to warn the non-book-reading portion of the audience that the season would be darker and more brutal, to prepare them for this moment. “We’re not playing around here,” Moore said. “This is the story. There’s a book that we’re following, and this is part of the story that is absolutely necessary to that book. There’s really no way not to do it. This is a horrific situation, so it should be horrific.”
Male rape is so rarely featured on television, to have not one but two extended incidents that haunt the lead character and require an intervention-style recovery is pretty groundbreaking. “This is not a place you take your lead male character,” Moore said. “I kind of knew, as soon as I read the book, I had never seen this story on film or TV. It felt like we had a unique challenge, a unique story, and it didn’t feel like there was much out there to help us along the way, so it was like, ‘How are we going to figure this out?'”
Challenge No. 1 was adapting the scenes from Diana Gabaldon’s book. Moore had planned episodes 15 and 16 as a two-parter, and originally divvied up the episodes between himself and Ira Behr to script. (Behr got 15, Moore got 16). But as Moore tried to write his episode, he struggled with the emotional focal points. Dialogue and conversation between Black Jack and Jamie wasn’t hard — “you can write pages of them just bantering back and forth” — but he couldn’t figure out a rhythm between the violence, fear, agony, and quieter moments of reflection. “I would get stuck in the banter, and then I would just throw in violence, and it wouldn’t feel connected,” he said. “And I didn’t want to fuck around with it.” So he called in Behr for help. The two hadn’t collaborated on a script since working together on Star Trek, but “it all kind of coalesced.”
Read the rest of the article at the source
Wow, this is one of the best interviews yet. I still can’t get this episode out of my mind. I truly love the book version, well at least the time spent on Jamie’s healing and the hot springs scene, but the TV version is so compelling, and really captures the essence of Jamie’s experience from the book.
Reblogged this on Ana Fraser Lallybroch Blog.
Wow, good interview!!! This episode was disturbing, compelling, heartbreaking, and hopeful!!! So many on this show deserve Emmy nominations/awards. Amazing portrayals, especially by Caitriona, Sam, and Tobias. Thank you for not holding back, you took us on a real emotional rollercoaster for this entire season!!!!
An excellent interview with Ron D Moore…..I wouldn’t expect anything less. Interviews with principle players and/or
behind the scenes persons, are forthcoming and at times brutally honest. No sugar coating or shilly-shallying which,
I find, adds more depth to the story as it unfolds visually. I am, at the moment, digesting Ep 16 after viewing it alone,
marveling at the courage shown by both Sam and Tobias, as they tackled the unmitigated brutality and mental and
emotional breaking down of Jamie’s psyche…to Caitriona’s fight to either bring Jamie back from the brink of utter
hopelessness with her fierce devotion, or join him as he plunged into the well of despair. That brought tears.
Whew…they made it through, as did I.
The beach scene with the (imagined) invigorating sea air was certainly refreshing and the touch of levity in the farewell
between Claire, Angus and Rupert was welcome.
As the camera pulled back to show Willy sadly watching the boat pull forward to the waiting ship, I was wishing they
could have taken him with them. He loved them like family.
So, now the long wait begins ’til we again meet our intrepid pair, Jamie and the pregnant Claire…accompanied by the
forever loyal Murtagh.
‘Til then…I’ll be thinking of the Outlander family as they work hard on Series 2 for our future enjoyment.
Lang mae their lum reek !!