Fans of “Outlander” got a treat on Friday: At the end of the panel for the show at San Diego Comic-Con, they were shown the first episode of the third season, which arrives Sept. 10 on Starz.
The episode depicts Jamie (Sam Heughan), Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and Frank (Tobias Menzies) as they adjust to the difficult new realities of their lives. Jamie and Claire have been separated in time again, and Claire has traveled to Boston to live with Frank — and have Jamie’s child.
Before the episode aired, the “Outlander” panelists — Balfe, Heughan, Menzies, Sophie Skelton (Brianna), Richard Rankin (Roger Wakefield), author Diana Gabaldon, and executive producers Ronald D. Moore and Maril Davis — talked about Season 3.
Starz also released a video recap of the first two seasons, to help fans prepare for Season 3:
At the panel, Moore said that this season of “Outlander” is “pivotal,” taking the characters from Scotland to the Boston of the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, and also from the Caribbean to South Carolina.
“It’s a pretty dynamic, interesting season that takes the characters on a long journey and takes them [far from where] they eventually started,” the showrunner noted.
Part of the journey is across the Atlantic, and “Outlander” used some of the sets, ships, and tanks that had been utilized by another Starz series, “Black Sails.”
“It’s a fantastic facility outside of Cape Town,” Moore said. The show was in South Africa for “almost four months. I think it’s an amazing set of episodes.”
“We call ourselves a traveling show — there hasn’t been a season yet that has been like the previous seasons,” Davis said.
Moderator Jenna Dewan Tatum, one of the hosts of “World of Dance,” not only asked questions of the panelists — including surprise guest Graham McTavish — she also challenged them to dance if they didn’t want to answer a question. She said her husband, Channing Tatum, who is also a fan of “Outlander,” would be fine with it.
“He would say, ‘Yes, please dance with him,’” Tatum said to Heughan.
Skelton talked about first auditioning for the role of Brianna in 2014. By the time the role came around again, she was able to watch the first season “on repeat” in order to take elements of Heughan and Balfe’s performances, to make her “realistically the offspring of those two.”
Rankin said that he researched a lot of history for his character, Roger Wakefield. “I traveled around, looked at historical subjects, and threw myself in at that angle,” he said.
Balfe talked about the challenges of building her character’s journey through several different time frames.
“It was interesting to figure out how time weighs on a person. How does tragedy weigh on a person? How do you live with grief? They were interesting challenges to come to as an actor,” Balfe said.
Heughan described seeing someone watch an episode of “Outlander” on a recent flight — an early episode from the first season.
“It just feels like such a long time ago,” Heughan said. “This season we got to really stretch the characters and go somewhere else with them and [find out] who they are after 20 years apart.”
This time around, “the characters have their own lives and go through all the emotions of grief and acceptance and losing someone they loved,” Heughan added.
“One of the great privileges of being in the third or fourth year — that’s kind of a dream as an actor, to sit and have that time to explore” the characters, Menzies said. In the upcoming season, “we get to unpack the life of Claire and Frank in Boston, which is told in a slightly different way in the book, but we get a chance to see that in real time.”
No comments:
Post a Comment