New Interview of Caitriona Balfe with 'The Globe and Mail'

New Interview of Caitriona Balfe with ‘The Globe and Mail’ 4 comments

Here’s a new interview of Caitriona Balfe with ‘The Globe and Mail’

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The Irish woman is Caitriona Balfe, who plays Claire, the canny heroine thrown back in time from the 1940s to the tumult of Scotland in 1743. She is nominated for a Golden Globe on Sunday for Actress in a Drama.

Balfe, age 34, is tall and dark-haired. She sits across from me briefly amused by the fuss the publicist makes about what chair Balfe should sit in. I tell her I won’t keep her long. “Ah, don’t worry,” she says, the rhythm of speech of County Monaghan, where she was born, surfacing in those few words.

Read more of the interview after the jump

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I ask her what Claire is and what she represents, but do it sideways. Once, I wrote that Claire is a true super-heroine. Diana Gabaldon, who wrote theOutlander books, wrote to me to say, “Mr. Doyle, she’s not a super-heroine, she’s just a very competent woman.”

Balfe says this is true. “To be a super-heroine means having superpowers. Claire has no special power, she is intelligent and able to adapt to situations that befall her. She is a woman of the 1940s, when the war meant that women had jobs they had not been entrusted with before, and able to leave the home. She’s seen a lot, was a nurse in wartime, and she’s strong in any situation.”

My time with Balfe together is brief so it’s necessary ask bluntly about the Golden Globe nominations and what it means for her and for Outlander?

Another one of those very direct, cool looks as she answers, but with a billow of amusement: “For me, it’s kind of wild,” she says, laughing gently. “Before this I had five or six acting credits to my name. Two of which I didn’t even speak in. It’s a personal milestone, you might say. It puts me in a place when I have more opportunity, and it comes from this wonderful opportunity.”

“For the show, for everyone involved from the crew in Scotland to Diana, to everyone, it brings more attention, something Outlander deserves.”