Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 1, episode 8 brought a lot for multiple characters. Ellen had to face her purity test, while Henry feared he was seeing a ghost.
We chatted with showrunner Matt B. Roberts about the series, looking at the research into the purity test and what all this now means for Ellen and the MacKenzies. We also talked about PTSD and how much of a wonderful job Jeremy Irvine is doing by showing so much of Henry’s emotions.
Of course, there are spoilers for Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 1, episode 8. You didn’t think there wouldn’t be, right?
Claire and Jamie: I adore the research you’ve always done into history, and not just the real people you show. In this one, it was all about the purity test and items that I was sure came from the Edinburgh dungeons. What sort of research did you do into these instruments?
Matt B. Roberts: You know we wanted to be as real as possible. We looked into it from a writing standpoint, and we certainly looking into it to make it as real as possible. Then the prop department got into it, because they wanted the instruments to be as real as possible. We wanted the actions to be as real as possible.
I think in both Outlander and Blood of My Blood, period correctness is important. We do always say there’s magic in the show. There’s fate, there’s destiny, whatever you want to call it. People time travel, so there’s magic in the show. But once you’re in the moment, in this period, it has to be real and feel like that. It just helps to tell the story, and it helps the actors get into character.
I remember we were looking at all those instruments, and everybody was like “Holy, moly, those are real?” The thing we found was that not a lot of them have changed that much. The materials and sizes have been updated, but many of these are still very much in use. The men were more surprised than the women, so we knew we had to tell that in the story.
With our fanbase mostly being female, we didn’t have to show everything in there. Harriet [Slater] played the emotion of it so strong that people could envision what was going on rather than having to show it. I think a lot of women understood more than the men, but for the men looking at her face during the cutting, I thought it was a fantastic level of acting.
It wasn’t just the mechanics of what was going on. It was what her brothers were putting her through. Her brothers didn’t stand up for her. They didn’t say “we’re not letting her take this test.” Whether they believed her or not, they let her go through with it.
I said that moment when she stares Colum down and looks at him, and the Mrs. Fitz says, “Shame on all of you,” that’s the power the guys have and that’s every story in the world, in a lot of places in the world. Men have the power to make some of this stuff stop, and it doesn’t happen.
ClaireandJamie.com: Harriet did a phenomenal job. Where can we see Ellen’s relationship with her brothers going? This is a huge breakdown, especially with Colum.
MBR: It’s almost what you see is what you get with Dougal, but with Colum, she cares. She cared for him, and they had a bond. It was a real brotherly-sisterly bond, and I think there really was a love there. There’s that betrayal she feels when he obviously picked the clan survival over her survival and used her as a tool. Even now, he’s so desperate to have this wedding to strengthen the MacKenzies within the Highlands, and he’s forgetting that this is his sister.
I think that’s what she feels, because in the Outlander books, as you know, once she leaves, she never talks to him again. There’s writing, but they never see each other again. There was a play on that in Blood, but obviously, we’re not going to play it to the extent that they never see each other again. Séamus [McLean Ross] and Harriet, when you put them in a room together, are fantastic, so it’s hard to keep that going. It’s a relationship we love to see on camera, and we’re going to play that out.
But yeah, this purity test is tough on everybody, which is crazy. Obviously not Dougal, but Colum does have feelings, and they’re being tested because it’s a dilemma for him. Certainly not on Ellen’s level, but it’s there.
ClaireandJamie.com: I’ve always said that Blood of My Blood might not go the way the books say because we do have unreliable narrators in there. We don’t know everything that’s happened, and that gives you a lot of room to play with things.
MBR: Yeah, in the Ellen and Brian story, they marry—they elope—and then they live at Lallybroch and have kids. There’s a lot of open space there that we’re playing with in their story. We add Henry and Julia into the mix.
But [Ellen and Brian’s] story never, in my mind, got passed onto Jamie. Jamie was only eight when Ellen dies. Think about a lot of people’s lives. I ask questions like this in the writer’s room all the time. How much of your parents’ story do you really know? Do they share all those intimate details with you? If my mom and dad were hanging out in a ruined church like the way Brian and Ellen were hand fast, I certainly wouldn’t want to hear about it. They say, “We got handfasted in the church.” That’s fine; I don’t want to hear the rest of that story.
So, parents leave things out. The stories fit the narrative at the time, and I think, that’s in my mind what happened in Outlander. Jamie got a story when he’s eight, or maybe even just six, or whatever.
ClaireandJamie.com: Let’s jump to Henry and Julia because I’m running out of time. They are finally reunited for a short time. Jeremy is doing an outstanding job! What was the thought process in having them separated for so long and having such an emotional reunion for both of them in different ways?
MBR: It’s funny, because I’m hearing about how they’re apart for so long, but we’ve had scenes with them together quite a bit. They’re just in flashback that their story’s being told. They’re just not together in the past, and I think that’s where it’s coming from.
In Outlander, we have Jamie and Claire together, and then they’re yanked apart. Then Jamie and Claire are together, and really bad things happen and they’re yanked apart. Jamie and Claire are together, and then something horrible happens, and they get yanked apart again. It’s the story of Outlander.
When it came to Blood, we wanted to mix it up a little, because we have two couples. The books have more time to show the pure joy and happiness, but we don’t get a lot of time to do that. So, those moments when we do are so impactful, they’re so special. Like the wedding night, the reunion, after the hurricane. These moments become a thousand times more emotional.
When they meet in the corridor, Henry doesn’t even know if it’s real after what he’s gone through. We bring Henry down to rock bottom, so that moment is amazingly passionate and emotional. People who’ve seen this episode 10, 12 times through editing always get emotional at that moment, because it’s so earned. I think when people see it, the floodgates will open.
I’ve learned from Outlander over the last 13 years that people want to really emote when they watch the show. They like to cry, and they’ll ask, “How many Kleenex boxes should I buy for this episode?” They want to cry! They just want to feel, and I think we give them those moments. And that’s what we do with the characters, and some of that is keeping them apart.
ClaireandJamie.com: Henry has quickly become my favorite character, especially with his portrayal of PTSD, which he didn’t even know what it was at the time. To see him completely mentally break, I want to thank you for giving us that reality of what it can be.
MBR: Thank you. Jeremy is very thoughtful about this as well. The thing about PTSD that we’ve learned, and that I’ve learned because of Outlander, too, is that there’s no set order of things. One person is affected in a totally different way than another person. That’s why it’s so hard to treat. There’s no set of symptoms.
There are certain things, but triggers, no one knows. I think Jeremy really dug into the stories that we want to tell with it, and when it affects him. One of those was episode 6, and it was very natural for that break and the hallucination. Hallucinations are part of PTSD that there are just out-of-body feelings, so it was very natural to play.
All three of them in that moment was real, and it got everybody to a place where you worry. That’s why this moment in episode 8 is so powerful, because it’s real. The way he touches her is insane.
ClaireandJamie.com: I noticed it was all in the touch.
MBR: Yeah. I think once he got close enough to do that and the way he did it and the smell—we can’t play smell, but he there was that proximity to know it was her. If he had his right mind, he would have never thought Sema was Julia, ever. But he was so out of body that it didn’t matter who was standing in front of him.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood airs on Fridays on STARZ.
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