‘Outlander’: Why Sam Heughan Once Admitted He ‘Wanted to See Jamie Lose Almost Everything’
During the first season of Outlander, fans witnessed Sam Heughan’s Jamie Fraser experience a number of traumatic moments. However, there was one moment from episode 6 titled “The Garrison Commander” that stood out above all others.
According to Heughan, this was the moment he “wanted to see Jamie lose almost everything.”
Sam Heughan loved watching his ‘Outlander’ co-stars in this intense season 1 episode
The sixth episode of season 1 stands out for a number of reasons. First, as Variety notes, the majority of the hour “focused on two characters simply sitting in a room and talking.” It was a cat and mouse game between Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Captain Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies). And Heughan couldn’t get enough of it.
During an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014, Heughan revealed that he “loved watching” the episode simply as an audience member.
“I was on tenterhooks; it just turns on its head all the time,” Heughan said.
That intense scene took a week to film, beginning with Claire meeting Lord Thomas (John Hefernan). Balfe described that as a “hopeful moment,” followed by Black Jack Randall coming in to “thwart it all.”
“But it’s great because it’s a real tete-a-tete,” Balfe recalled. “They really just go at each other and she can’t help it. That’s the great thing about Claire, she just can’t help fighting back. Sometimes that’s not always the smartest thing but it makes it very interesting.”
Caitriona Balfe compared shooting ‘The Garrison Commander’ to performing a play
Because “The Garrison Commander” episode featured such a long, intense scene, Balfe says it felt like they were doing a play.
“It’s just two people who sit and talk and it’s great that we did it like that. For me, it was just such a powerful scene,” Balfe revealed.
She noted that in that scene Claire sees that connection to her husband Frank, a physical thing that she has been able to touch and hold. Balfe says that in that scene, Claire felt like she had to be able to get through to Black Jack.
But just when she thinks she has gotten through to her husband’s ancestor, the heartbreaking twist stunned both Claire and Outlander fans.
Heughan was only part of two brief scenes during the episode, but they were both extremely important. The most intense scene was at the beginning of the episode, and Heughan wanted to see Jamie lose almost everything.
‘Outlander’ star Sam Heughan says this memorable scene was ‘an important thing to get’
The traumatic scene that featured Heughan at the beginning of the episode was when Jamie received a brutal flogging at the hands of Black Jack. According to Express, Heughan said that filming the scene wasn’t easy, but he was pleased with the results.
“It was hard work to do. It was freezing cold there — I think it was February, I had this whole blood rig on, I was manacled and hanging from the stage,” Heughan recalled. “I really wanted to see Jamie lose almost everything, but not. Tobias, he goes for it, it was wonderful.”
Menzies agreed, saying it was a “mixture of both intense and very technical.” He added that the scene had to be “a very visceral, guttural display of malevolence” because the experience and Jamie’s scars are drivers throughout the story.
“Both of their lives are not the same after, so it felt like an important thing to get, the weirdness and mania of whatever that event was. But it’s definitely a day where you have to commit massively to what you’re doing,” Menzies said.
Seasons 1 through 5 of Outlander are available on Amazon Prime Video.
