We’re closing in on the beginning of Outlander: Blood of My Blood. The first two episodes will premiere on Friday, Aug. 8, and we’re going to see the love story of Ellen and Brian play out on the screen.
However, it’s not just about them. Matthew B. Roberts made the decision to add Claire’s parents, Julia and Henry, into the story as well. Now we know that time travel is involved, and we had to ask about the decision to not only add that in but to have both of Claire’s parents with the time travel gene.
Roberts and Maril Davis chatted with us exclusively about the upcoming series. Outlander: Blood of My Blood is certainly for old and new fans alike.
Matthew B. Roberts and Maril Davis talk time travel and Jacobites in Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Claire and Jamie: We barely know anything about Claire’s parents. Why did you decide to bring their love story in, and then with Ellen and Brian, how did you match all the canon?
Matthew B. Roberts: If you look at the Ellen and Brian story, the breadcrumbs from the book, I don’t know that that would have extended out multiple seasons of a show. Given that in the book, they elope, and immediately kind of move to Lallybroch. So, I needed a way to extend the series.
It was fairly natural in the sense that when you think about all the years have gone by with Outlander, there are all these, what some people might call, coincidences, but in Outlander, the feel magical and destined.
So, Claire time-travelled. It seemed pretty obvious that at least one of her parents would have had the gene. I pitched it to Maril, and I said, what if they didn’t die in the car crash? What if they lived, and what if they traveled through time? I think the kicker is, what if they were integral to Jamie and Claire actually being together? It started to swell, and when we started to really imagine this series, because it feels like to me, after reading all the books, that Jamie and Claire were fated in the stars, and we kind of play that a little bit as well. So, if that’s the case, then let’s see how that fate played out before they were even born.
C&J: You’ve touched on the reason to bring in time travel, but at what point did you realize that both parents had to have the gene?
MBR: Day one. They had to both go. I think that’s the love story. Outlander’s covered Claire in one time and Frank in another time, and then Claire in one time and Jamie in another time, so that’s been covered. The interesting thing was putting them in the same time period, but ripping them apart.
Maril Davis: And also, I think it’s so heartbreaking to think that they were or will be in Claire’s time potentially, and then maybe she never saw them and never knew they were still living.
MBR: I have children. When I leave them for a day, it hurts. So, imagine leaving your child and not being able to get back to your child. I think that’s the devastating heartbreak for that couple, and I think a lot of parents who watch the show will feel that too.
C&J: There’s a lot of real history that’s pulled in, and I’ll admit it was the real history that drew me into Outlander in the first place. So, we’re in 1715-ish, the First Jacobite Rebellion. How much research did you go back into doing into that First Rebellion, considering we’ve already seen so much of the second?
MBR: Of course, we dig into the research all the time, just for the day-to-days of the characters, what they go through. Where we start off in 1714, we build towards the Jacobite Rising. I’m not going to tell you when it happens, but it will get there, and all the politics and the backstabbing.
And what I really like about writing this particular show, and I think a lot of the writers do too, is that in Outlander the family got along. They loved each other. They fought with each other against whatever came at them, and Blood is a little different in that you have rival clans, but you have rivals within your own clan. That family dynamic and what family love looks like, and family hate. And who can push your buttons more than the people you’ve grown up with?
Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres on Friday, Aug. 8 on STARZ.
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