Here is a NEW Interview with Matt Roberts from Entertainment Weekly
From EW:
What in tarnation was that?
In the second episode of season 5 of Outlander, an unexpected form of torture is displayed and two women are seen grappling for entertainment. Fun? Here, Executive Producer Matthew B. Roberts explains why the tar and feathering scene was necessary for the story, and why they decided to use a gal-on-gal fight scene to help re-introduce a pretty loathsome character.
More after the jump!
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The tar and feathering scene was intense. What kind of research did you do on that?
MATTHEW B. ROBERTS: We pulled up the more contemporary photos of people in the early 1900s and late 1800s, old photographs of people who were tarred and feathered. It was horrific when we were going through these. Once again, one of the things we usually start with is how to make it as real as possible. What can we do? Will it look right? What will the audience reaction be? Do you really want to look at something like that? We questioned all these things and we don’t want to be gratuitous, but it also has to play. And what’s happening on screen has to affect the characters, not the audience. So if the characters need to see it and feel it, then we feel like we should play it. It’s not just a gratuitous moment to cause shock and awe for the audience. So we needed this tar and feathering to happen for the sake of Murtagh. The horror is there for the residents of Hillsborough. So later in the story when Jamie sees it for the first time, he’s affected by it, like, ‘wow’ in the sense that Jamie has seen a lot, but… this isn’t a war in the sense of a man being shot with a musket. This is someone being tortured. Jamie knows that firsthand. It has an effect on him because I don’t think Jamie would do that to another man, so there’s an internal conflict for Jamie.
I cringe whenever I see something like tar and feathering. It was a cruel practice way back when. I hope they don’t call the pioneer days “the good old days”, it was more a matter of survival.