Highland flings
Stars Jamie Roy, Harriet Slater, Hermione Corfield and Jeremy Irvine lift the lid on making Outlander: Blood of My Blood, as showrunner Matthew B Roberts discusses the challenges of plotting and producing the historical prequel.
If the cast of Outlander: Blood of My Blood had any misconceptions about the impact of joining a prequel to the long-running historical saga, a stateside trip soon put things into perspective.
Starring in the series “has been amazing. It’s exceeded my expectations,” Harriet Slater tells DQ. “If I’m honest, I knew how big it was – or I thought I did until we went to LA and saw our faces 30 feet high. That was wild.”
“And we’ve been welcomed with nothing but love and support from everybody – the fans, the crew who we’re working with in Scotland, the old cast from Outlander,” notes co-star Jamie Roy. “Everyone’s just had so much love and support for us. So it’s made any kind of fears dissipate quite quickly. I’m just so excited to go to work every day.”
Based on the novels by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander debuted on US cable network Starz in 2014, telling the story of Claire Randall (Caitríona Balfe), a British Army nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously sent back in time to 1743 and thrown into an unknown world, falling in step with Clan MacKenzie. When she is forced to marry Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), a chivalrous and romantic young Scottish warrior, they embark on a passionate affair that tears Claire’s heart between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
Ahead of its eighth and final season airing in early 2026, prequel Blood of My Blood has now launched on Starz in the US and internationally on MGM+, with episodes of the 10-part first season released weekly. A second season is already in production.
Centring on the parents of Claire and Jamie, the story similarly blends romance, history and time travel, taking viewers from the battlefields of the First World War to the Highlands of 18th century Scotland as two couples must defy the forces that seek to tear them apart.
Episode one opens in Scotland, where Slater and Roy star as Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser – Jamie’s parents – who strike up a strong connection at a gathering held following the death of her father, as the process for selecting a new Laird of Clan MacKenzie begins.
By the end, viewers also meet Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) – Claire’s parents – who are suddenly separated when Julia stumbles into the same stone circle at Craigh na Dun that transports Claire through time in the original series.
Episode two then reveals the origins of their own love story, with the pair writing love letters to each other through the First World War, before picking up with Julia in the 18th century – and Henry is not far behind.
Produced by Tall Ship Productions, No Fooling Productions, Story Mining & Supply Company and Sony Pictures Television, the show’s cast also includes Tony Curran as Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat; Séamus McLean Ross as Colum MacKenzie; Sam Retford as Dougal MacKenzie; Rory Alexander as Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser; and Conor MacNeill as Ned Gowan.
Blood of My Blood has been several years in the works, with showrunner and long-time Outlander producer Matthew B Roberts searching for a “natural” way to extend the world of the show. Early discussions included a spin-off focused on Lord John Grey, who already has his own series of books written by Gabaldon.
But it was the question of the parentage of Jamie and Claire that really began to interest him, picking up threads in the Outlander novels about who they were and how they got together. The only stumbling block was that Claire’s parents both die in the novels after their car crash – an event they both now survive in Blood of My Blood.
“I knew there was room to do a story there, but I didn’t think it had enough traction to give us multiple seasons,” Roberts says. “Then reading a script when Claire was talking with just a mention of her parents, it dawned on me that one of them had to be a time traveller. So I just pitched it as, ‘What if they didn’t die?’ – and people sparked to that and it snowballed.”
Sidestepping the deaths of Julia and Henry might have been a big creative risk, and Roberts acknowledges that some fans of Outlander like the series to remain faithful to the source material. “This was a big tributary off of that,” he says. “But then again, Blood of My Blood is a different show. I like to say it has the same DNA as Outlander, but it’s like a child. It has your DNA and it has some of your characteristics, but you want them to be their own person and do their own thing. And that’s kind of like Blood of My Blood. It’s the same but different.”
Throughout development, Roberts wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries of what this prequel might look like and where its characters might go, and the initial reaction to the series has given him confidence that the fans are on board – and new viewers will join them.
“I was stressed, of course,” he says. “Are they going to like this or not? And it’s been overwhelming. So it feels like, ‘Alright, they want to hear this story too. They want to see where this goes.’ The tie-in is not only that Henry and Julia can time-travel, but they also are very important and integral to creating this other love, to helping this other love story happen so their daughter can be with Jamie. That’s where this fate element comes in.”
Taking on the central roles, Slater (Pennyworth) and Roy (Flowers & Honey) bonded over “lots and lots” of karaoke and negronis. “A combination of those two will make anyone pals,” Roy jokes, revealing he’s an “Elton John man” and also does a mean rendition of Enrique Iglesias ballad Hero. Slater prefers Avril Lavigne and Abba.
“We just got along very well as people, and we both really love what we do. We really respect the craft,” Roy says. “Maybe a couple of times we would talk about story and script and stuff, but, for the most part, we’d come with our own ideas and suggestions for the day, and then we’d find the scene as we were working, and that was great.
“Harriet’s such a giving actor. Even when it’s not her coverage, when it’s on me, she’s really giving everything. That speaks volumes because you get to see some of the amazing stuff we’ve done this season, and I think that just comes from us both really wanting to make this the best it can be.”
Slater recalls their chemistry test, where they performed together in a studio while the director, producers and casting team watched on a Zoom call. “It was quite unique, but it obviously went well. The rest is history,” she says.
To play Ellen, the actor also had to perfect her Scottish accent – which she describes as a “quite daunting” task and one of the “scariest” parts of the job. “But I love a challenge,” she says. “I’ve never done a Scottish accent before, but we have a dialect coach on set with us all the time, every day. I’ve never had that level of support on a job before, so that’s great. Obviously having an entirely Scottish crew is pretty helpful as well.”
Amid clan politics, uprisings and feuds, there is a lot standing in the way of Brian and Ellen’s relationship. Slater points to an episode-one scene where they even admit to the complications that might keep them apart. “That’s what they say in the scene on the bridge. They know there are going to be obstacles ahead but they’ve made that commitment to battle them together,” she says.
In contrast, Julia and Henry are already together when they first appear on screen, though they are soon separated when Julia steps into the time portal. The resulting storylines then gave Irvine (War Horse) plenty to “get my teeth into,” he says. “The characters gave us as actors so much to do, and so many options. You sign up for a lot of seasons if you sign up something like this, and there’s enough here to keep me busy.
“We very quickly find ourselves in the same time period as everyone else, and we start off quite separate. As we go along, the two converge more and more. It’s quite exciting to see how that happens as well. Things don’t get easier for them, though.”
“And we still continue to get glimpses into the 1920s,” Corfield (We Hunt Together) teases. “But we can’t say how or why.”
But as viewers see in episode two, where Julia and Henry’s relationship builds, it’s an “unconditional” love that keeps them together, despite them being separated through time and place. “To believe in this world, we have to believe in absolute true love,” Irvine says. “That’s what these two characters have. They both can’t live without the other, and so if they’re separated, all they’re going to try to do is get back to each other.”
Corfield says: “You see how much, in Henry’s case, he’s come to depend on Julia. She’s his support network, and same with Henry for Julia. But they’re both quite alone in the world as well. Once they’re separated, it’s the fear of being in a totally different time period, not knowing which way is up. It’s about trying to find your way back to your North Star.”
With the show in development for several years, Roberts had a lot of time to think about how the story might play out. Key plot points or scenes and moments the writing staff wanted to see were picked out and used as a route through the season. However, he then had to be wary of the “ramifications” any decision in the prequel might have for the original show.
“You have to be protective of the canon going forward, of what happens in the books,” he says. “We don’t want to blow that up. We don’t want to ruin that. So we have guard rails, but they’re much wider than Outlander.”
Roberts also had Gabaldon on hand. The author is a consultant on Blood of My Blood, wrote episode nine and co-wrote the finale with Roberts. She is also writing an episode on season two. “She gets everything. She gets the scripts and she watches the dailies, so she’s very aware of what we’re doing and where we’re going,” the showrunner says. He also reveals that he has an end point for the prequel in mind, though how the show gets there – and how long it takes – is still up for grabs.
“The big difference is we have multiple characters we can follow on Blood of My Blood, whereas on Outlander, you were really limited to Jamie and Claire,” he says. “Yes, there are other characters, but everybody’s story had to flow through Jamie and Claire. That’s not necessarily the case on Blood of My Blood, so you can follow other characters, and that leads to more and more story.”
That Blood of My Blood isn’t based on a specific set of books meant the actors could feel the freedom the writers were working with, and found that things could – and did – change if lines or plot points didn’t work in the cast readthroughs.
“The writers on this are so great, and they’re constantly coming up with new, fresh things,” Roy says. “Sometimes whole episodes will feel like they’re not quite working, and they’ll do a whole new thing and just totally refresh them. We had that in the latter half of the season. They changed the story drastically and made it so it keeps people on the edges of their seats. If people aren’t wanting to go on to the next one by the end, something’s wrong.”
“Hopefully it keeps them on their toes and excited,” says Corfield. “We literally get the scripts for the next block while we’re shooting the block before. So we’re learning as much as everyone else is, which is crazy. But it’s quite fun.”
“But as far as the characters in the books are concerned, we’ve died,” Irvine says of Julia and Henry. “The downside of that is they can kill us off anytime. All we’ve got to do is say the wrong thing to the writers and we’ll get the chop!”
Splitting their time almost evenly between studio-built sets and location shoots, Blood of My Blood certainly continues Outlander’s reputation for complementing the beautiful Scottish scenery with standout production design.
“The attention to detail is amazing,” Corfield says. “I remember walking onto the kitchen set for Castle Leathers the first time, and it was like a proper working kitchen. All the food is historically accurate, and it’s just so beautifully done. That definitely helps in terms of doing the scene.”
“You’re not on a green screen,” adds Irvine. “That’s really hard work, but so much of it is done for you because it’s all there. All the First World War stuff we’re doing, explosions really are going off all around you. You’re just reacting to it. That makes your job a lot easier.”
For Roberts, whether it’s the Scottish weather, a pandemic or writers and actors strikes, making Outlander has taught him to be nothing but flexible when it comes to production. “Something new comes up every day, and you have to juggle,” he says. “We have human beings who work on the show, and they have human issues that happen, and we have to work around those sometimes, but Outlander: Blood of My Blood has a fantastic team across the board and everybody works really hard to make it all work.
“When something challenging hits them, there’s never a negative response. It’s like, ‘How do we fix this? How do we make it work?’ When you come to work like that, you know it’s just going to happen, rather than it’s going to be a struggle all the time. We’ve been doing that for a long time.”
Another lesson he learned on Outlander was the importance of viewers falling in love with a show’s characters. “If you fall in love with them, you’ll invest in that, and they become part of you,” he says. “They’ll follow them as long as we have story.”
But don’t describe Blood of My Blood as a historical romance. “It’s a love story, because romances tend to end,” he says. “These love stories, they’re an escape. You go in, you get to live with these characters for an hour each week and it’s rewarding. It’s fun. Period dramas that do that are really special.”
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tagged in: Harriet Slater, Hermione Corfield, Jamie Roy, Jeremy Irvine, Matthew B Roberts, MGM, No Fooling Productions, Outlander, Outlander: Blood of my Blood, Sony Pictures Television, Starz, Story Mining & Supply Company, Tall Ship Productions