[This story contains spoilers from “Needfire,” season one, episode five of Outlander: Blood of My Blood.]
From ancient mythology to Romeo & Juliet, stories about star-crossed lovers who fall for each other against their better judgment have become tales as old as time. After telling the hard-fought love story of time-traveling WWII nurse Claire Beauchamp (Caitríona Balfe) and dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) across eight seasons of Outlander, executive producers Matthew B. Roberts and Maril Davis felt it was only fitting that one of the new couples in their prequel — which centers around Claire’s and Jamie’s parents in 18th-century Scotland — would have a forbidden romance.
In Blood of My Blood, those star-crossed lovers are Jamie’s folks, Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy). Set against a backdrop of vicious infighting between rival Scottish clans, the prequel began in wake of the sudden death of Ellen’s father, Red Jacob (Peter Mullan), who was the leader of Clan MacKenzie. Despite her father’s promise to never marry her off for political gain, Ellen quickly found herself caught in the middle of a heated battle for succession between her two brothers, Colum (Seamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford).
Although she is easily more qualified than both of them, Ellen’s gender makes her bid for Laird a non-starter, so she must work behind the scenes to control her own destiny. While she was able to quickly engineer a solution to help save their family name in the third episode — Colum agrees to be the peacetime laird, while Dougal will be the wartime chieftain — Ellen is unable to prevent Colum from marrying her off to Malcolm Grant (Jhon Lumsden) as a strategic alliance between the MacKenzie and Grant clans.
What the rest of the MacKenzies don’t know, however, is that Ellen, in the midst of her grief, has fallen head over heels for Brian, the illegitimate son of the despicable Lord Lovat (Tony Curran) and a member of a rival clan. The two have found increasingly creative ways to see each other, with Julia (Hermione Corfield), Claire’s time-traveling mother who has been forced to work as a servant for Lovat, even helping to facilitate their forbidden encounters.
In the fifth episode, which takes place almost entirely at an annual spring festival called Beltane, Ellen makes up an excuse to sneak away from Malcolm for a few hours and decides to take her relationship with Brian to the next level. “This moment was a chance for Ellen to step up and take agency and say, ‘You know what? I’m making this choice for myself because I might not get any choices. I might be walking out that door and marrying Malcolm Grant, so this is going to be my choice,’” Davis tells The Hollywood Reporter of the characters’ first sex scene (that was not a dream sequence).
Ellen and Brian may have just declared their love and commitment to each other in a handfast ceremony, but their burgeoning relationship is about to upend both of their clans’ lives. Below, Slater and Roy open up to THR about how their real-life chemistry laid the groundwork for their onscreen romance, how they thought about playing Ellen and Brian’s most intimate scenes to date, and the characteristics they think Jamie inherited from his parents.
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Jamie, you were the first of the four Blood of My Blood leads to be cast, because of your resemblance to Sam Heughan, and you ended up reading with a bunch of potential Ellens. What do you each remember from your chemistry read together?
JAMIE ROY I was living in L.A. at the time and flew over to London to do a bunch of chemistry reads, and they’d already set up about 12 different actresses who I was going to meet. The first day was on a Friday, and I met seven of them. It was a long day, doing these scenes over and over again. They were all fantastic. They took direction very, very well. But I remember after each one would leave, our director, Jamie Payne, would say, “So what did you think? Did you feel it?” And I was like, “They were really good, but I don’t know. It didn’t feel right. There was something missing.” So after that first day, I felt a little bit disheartened because I started to think I was doing something wrong.
Anyway, I went up to Scotland for a fitting, and then they told me that there was another actress who was in Scotland at the time, but she could only read on the bank holiday, Monday. They asked, “Would you be able to read?” I said, “Yep, of course.”
HARRIET SLATER What if you had said no? (Laughs.)
JAMIE ROY I know, right? [But] we would’ve worked out, I think.
SLATER I was filming something else up in Scotland every other day that week, so the only day I could do was the bank holiday on Monday.
ROY [The chemistry read] was in an empty studio. There was one camera guy. But I met Harriet, and we had five minutes to chat before. (To Slater) You were so nice to me, so congratulatory. You were like, “Congrats on the role. You must be so excited.” I was like, “Yeah, thank you. So good to meet you. How are you feeling?” You were like, “Oh, I’m nervous.” I said, “Don’t worry, you’re going to smash it. It’s going to be great.” So there was this instant connection. I was like, “Oh, great. We get along. Let’s see what happens when we start doing the thing.”
I remember distinctly, because you have such a lovely smile and you were so warm and bubbly before, and then you switched into something completely different. As soon as you started talking, I was like, “Well, this feels different.” We did three scenes. I think one of them was with Colum, but two with me. One was the scene from episode one, so it was the meeting in the stables and then the bridge scene put into one. And then the second scene we did was from Outlander —
SLATER It was a really great scene.
ROY The last one from season two, I think, when Jamie says goodbye to Claire at the stones. The bridge scene was beautiful, but the one that I felt was completely different was the scene from Outlander. We were both in tears, and I remember you physically pushing me and I was grabbing you —
SLATER It was quite aggressive, wasn’t it?
ROY It was pretty physical and so passionate, but already we had that trust. We were working off each other so well, and you said to me, “Can I do this?” I said, “Yes. Do you mind if I hold you here?” There was so much consent straight away, and I remember forgetting about everything else, and you were the only person that mattered in that moment. As soon as we finished, you collapsed to the floor. (Laughter.)
SLATER I did! I literally fell to the floor with relief, just the rush of adrenaline leaving my body, because I was so nervous beforehand. I’d never done a chemistry read before, and I only had two days’ notice. I found out Friday evening that I was reading with you on the Monday morning. I didn’t have that long to learn the scenes. My head was in this other job, and it was such a whirlwind, and then it went really well.
ROY I picked you up off the floor. I was like, “You did great. That was brilliant.” We said goodbye. I texted casting after, “Yeah, this has to be the one.” And they agreed, thank goodness.
Compared to Claire’s parents, Julia and Henry (Jeremy Irvine), a little bit more is known about Ellen and Brian. What kinds of initial conversations did you have with the creative team about what you collectively wanted to accomplish with this telling of Ellen and Brian’s story, and how did those discussions inform the way you thought about approaching your characters?
SLATER Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t know if we had any discussions about the relationship, did we?
ROY No, I think, honestly, a lot of trust was put into us to find it organically. Because the writing’s so great. As actors, when I’m reading it, I know exactly where our relationship goes. We find a really nice dynamic when we’re working together, and so far we haven’t been told, “Hey, you’re doing that wrong.”
SLATER I remember Jamie Payne [who directed the first three episodes] saying that the casting is like 90 percent of it. We’ve obviously been cast because we had chemistry, and that made his job a whole load easier because it meant that he didn’t have to edit it in a certain way that made it look like we had chemistry, because it was there already.
But I remember we did have conversations with the team about our characters individually. As Harriet, I think my emotions are close to the surface, and what I’m thinking and feeling is on my face all the time. I remember Matt [Roberts] saying, “Ellen’s not like that. She can’t be like that, because she needs to survive in a world where women can’t say what they want to say or do what they want to do. She needs to have a poker face to maintain what little power she has.” So that was a real challenge for me.
In the fifth episode, titled “Needfire,” Ellen is married off to Malcolm Grant (Jhon Lumsden, left) as a strategic alliance between the MacKenzie and Grant clans.
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Jamie, you’ve described Ellen and Brian as a kind of Scottish Romeo and Juliet, albeit with a happier ending. When you think back to their meet-cute in the pilot, when they’re both hiding out in a small barn to avoid the rest of the attendees of Red Jacob’s funeral at Castle Leoch, what do you think Ellen and Brian see in each other that makes them question everything they thought they knew about themselves?
ROY I think they find each other at the most obscure of times when neither of them are looking for love, and both of them are feeling like they don’t belong. They’re both very similar in that they’re outcasts in their own way, and they find each other in this moment — Ellen’s grieving and she just wants to be alone; Brian’s hiding, so he wants to be alone and he can’t believe he’s been dragged along to this gathering. So they find each other in these vulnerable moments and as soon as they see each other, there’s this magnetism of kindred spirits. There’s this unspoken connection that they just look at each other and know, “I can see myself in you. And more than that, I can see into your soul straight away, just through the eyes.”
In that first meeting, it’s more about what’s not being said as opposed to what is being said. Because the words on the paper are goofy! He starts talking about horses speaking. He’s making jokes about chickens (laughs) — 18th-century humor, yeah, that’s going to score all the chicks! But I think that magnetism in that first meeting is the most important thing between the two.
There’s a thrilling sense of danger any time these two interact, given that they could be found out at any point and their respective families would be ruined as a result. How did you think about deepening that sense of intimacy between your characters over the course of this first season, considering that they only have these fleeting moments together?
SLATER I think you said it. Each meeting they have means so much because they don’t know when they’re going to get a chance to see each other again, if ever, because it is so dangerous. Every time they meet, they’re risking everything: their reputation, the clans’ reputation, their lives potentially. They’re dealing with some really dangerous people.
It’s there in the writing, but we worked with an intimacy coordinator to make sure that it built up and that we didn’t give too much too soon, because people just didn’t give away much back then. Even the touch of a hand meant so much. That first time they meet on the bridge in the premiere, there’s a moment of touch, [to Roy] and it’s a very bold move by you to reach out and touch the hand of this lady who shouldn’t be there in the first place without a chaperone, which is I think Ellen’s first line when she gets off the horse. But it definitely adds to the heightened sense of danger and thrill of it all.
Ellen and Brian consummate their forbidden romance in episode five, and the halfway point of this first season marks a real inflection point in their relationship. What kinds of conversations did you have with each other and the rest of the creative team about that extended intimate scene?
ROY It was very important, when you do any of these sorts of scenes, that it is collaborative from the start. It’s not just the director, the creative team, telling you, “You’re going to do this, and that’s the final say.” We were involved with the story from the get-go with storyboards. We got to see their ideas and have inputs, and then we got to a point where everyone agreed, “All right, these are all the movements that we’re going to do. These are what we’re going to show in terms of cameras.”
From there, it’s all about rehearsing a dance — how many beats we’re going to go for certain things, on what beats the hands are going to go. It’s all very technical. Once we get comfortable and we rehearse it over and over again, at least from my point of view, I can let everything else go. I know exactly what I’m going to do with the dance, so I can really give my performance and we can be vulnerable. I can be present with Harriet and act as opposed to thinking, “Okay, I need to be on [this body part] for two [seconds] and then here for…” It’s easy once [the choreography is] in your body. That’s why it’s so important to have that rehearsal process with people who are keeping you safe and everyone on track.
SLATER And you mentioned the story element. I think that’s the perspective we came at it from: What story are we telling in this scene, and is it truthful for these characters? How would they actually behave at this point in their story, in this scene? I feel like we really did achieve that with that scene.
The intimate scenes in the original Outlander were always shot largely from the female gaze, because so much of this universe is about women pushing back against societal constraints and finding their own agency in past eras. Was that ever a topic of conversation that came up as you were shooting the more intimate scenes? Did you ever discuss the importance of Ellen consenting to having sex with Brian for the first time?
SLATER We definitely did. We actually discussed, even before that scene, the kiss. I don’t know if it made the final edit, but we decided that it would be Ellen who would lead Brian away to show that she was consenting and also that she really wanted it. I think that was really important to get across. (To Roy) Were there other moments?
ROY I think there may be a moment when they’re together in the undress and then Brian picks her up and puts her on the floor. That was a lot to do with taking care of Ellen, and it was mostly her [point of] view. This was both of these characters’ first time, but [there are] the technical aspects of what happens when it’s the first time — Brian’s making sure that he’s not hurting her, and it is okay to continue.
SLATER I feel like there really is a moment of eye contact between us as well just before that, saying yes with our eyes. It’s not aligned, but you can see it in their faces. He’s checking in with her, and she’s like, “Yes, this is okay.” I think it was written that it hurts, but then she pulls him closer to show that she is okay with it all. And we did discuss — maybe it’s female gaze-y — the importance of hands rather than nudity, for example, the touch of a hand or a hand on a face or in hair, and how powerful that can be.
Ellen (Slater, right) makes up an excuse to sneak away from Malcolm for a few hours and decides to take her relationship with Brian (Roy) to the next level.
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Ellen and Brian are easily more honest with each other than with anyone else in their lives. There’s another great scene in episode five where Ellen and Brian, post-coitus, are able to have an honest, uninterrupted conversation together about their lives and circumstances. What do you think can be revealed about your characters when it’s just the two of them talking alone?
ROY I didn’t think of this before we started, but I discovered as we went along shooting that Brian really does have these two different sides to himself. He has this side with most people, like his dad and friends. He has an edge to him, he’s a bit stoic and buttoned up. With Ellen, he can totally let everything go and be himself, and talk about romantic things and his aspirations and how he actually feels. I actually only thought of this the other day. It was at Comic-Con, actually, when it came out, and I was like, “Oh, that’s a really nice way of putting it.” But with everyone else, it is like he breathes in and braces up. And then when he is with Ellen, he can breathe out and relax.
SLATER That’s really nice.
ROY That moment in episode five is the first time, really, that they know that they’re alone. In the story, they’re far enough away so they know there’s no one who’s going to stumble across them, so they can really be themselves for this tiny little portion of time. I love those moments, don’t you?
SLATER Me too. I love that scene so much. I think it’s similar for Ellen. She’s only her true self when she’s with Brian. I was kind of confused in the beginning. I was like, “Who is this woman?” Because it seems like she’s so many different people depending on who she’s with, but she has to be in order to survive. That’s just the way she’s learned to operate in this male-dominated world. And it was in those moments where we both really relaxed. It’s that scene you just mentioned where I think they actually really get to know each other for the first time. They have a proper conversation about each other. Ellen learns that Brian is actually very sensitive, vulnerable, introspective and thoughtful, and there’s an openness to him. I think that only makes us fall in love with him even more.
ROY God, could you imagine if that conversation went south, and you found out all this stuff you hated about Brian? (Laughter.) And you’re like, “I got this date with Malcolm Grant that I need to get to. The sun’s going down…”
Part of the fun of watching this prequel, for fans of the original Outlander, is noticing the small nods to the various behavioral tics and personality traits that Claire and Jamie inherited from their parents. What parts of your characters do you think Jamie inherited from them?
ROY (To Slater) What do you think Jamie gets most from you?
SLATER I remember Matt saying that Jamie gets his fire, his fight, his strength in some ways and his determination from Ellen, from that MacKenzie side of his family. I think there are so many other lovely elements that he gets from you and from the two of them. I think from witnessing their relationship and their love, that’s how he learns what love is and what makes him so romantic.
ROY I think he gets from Brian his strong jawline, his loving, longing looks —
SLATER (Rolls her eyes.) His humbleness.
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A new episode of Outlander: Blood of My Blood will be available to stream every Friday at midnight on the STARZ app, with the season finale set to air on October 10.