Here’s a new interview of Sam Heughan with Variety
From Variety
The Emmy race for lead actor in a drama has long been the domain of tortured antiheroes and unrepentant villains, as if “good guys” can no longer be compelling enough to take home TV’s top prize. “Outlander” star Sam Heughan defies that assumption, portraying a character who is the epitome of traditional heroism — Jamie Fraser, a tall, dashing Highland swashbuckler — yet follows a trajectory rarely explored in any mainstream media: a romantic male lead who becomes the victim of brutal physical and sexual assault by a sadistic English army captain called Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), subverting the traditional TV tropes of period pieces and historical fantasy, where female characters are raped as a seemingly “inevitable” consequence of the time.
Variety spoke to Heughan about Jamie’s unlikely journey over the course of the first season, the emotional toll of his encounter with Randall and what’s ahead for Jamie and Claire in season two.
Read the interview after the jump
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Fans of Diana’s books have been anticipating seeing Jamie’s journey translated to screen for years now, and we’ve been talking about his season one trajectory since you first started doing interviews to promote the show. How does it feel to finally have the whole season out in the world?
Initially, relief was probably the first [emotion] because it’s such a big event and we worked really hard towards those scenes and I was really proud of them. We’d obviously been talking about them for quite a while — I was excited to see what people thought of it and also nervous whether we got it right. Ultimately, I’m very proud of it, and the reaction has been terrific.
Much of the penultimate episode of season one, “Wentworth Prison,” took place between you and Tobias in a dimly lit cell, and the tension was palpable — you were like a pair of caged animals sizing each other up. How did you approach those scenes?
It’s pretty epic. We rehearsed the scenes for maybe the week before, we went over all the text with the writers and director. Both Tobias and I come from a theater background so it felt quite comfortable and it felt like we were there supporting each other and we were both making suggestions about the characters, about the script — we did a little bit of cutting down of it and some changes. It was just about plotting the relationship and where it goes, and I think pretty much over the two weeks we shot it, I think we barely spoke, to be honest [laughs]. It was a very dark room, very claustrophobic, pretty depressing and it kind of worked for those scenes. He’s terrific fun to work with and there were some laughs, but as the scene progressed and it got darker, we both slightly regressed into ourselves, and I tried to maintain that concentration as well.
What strikes you most about Jamie’s evolution over the first season?
I wanted for him to be a boy at the start, quite carefree. He does have this big-headed stubbornness, but he’s very much a young lad with no responsibility, and then we see him growing up and becoming a man and having responsibilities, and also deciding what he wants to do with his life and who he wants to be. And then in season two, it’s going to be quite different — he’s thrust into a world that he’s not wholly familiar with.
Read the rest of the interview here at the source
Reblogged this on Ana Fraser Lallybroch Blog.
Pinned onto Outlander the Series.
Amazing actor!! Let’s give Caitriona Balfe some recognition for her Saturn Award!!! Sam can’t do this alone!!