Outlander: Blood of My Blood is less than a week away from hitting our screens, and we’re excited! We sat down with Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts and Executive Producer Maril Davis for a roundtable interview about the show’s creation process and everything that awaits us in Scotland in this new adventure.
The Essence of First Encounters
Roberts was clear that, in terms of balancing the magic of the original series with the new story, he wants “to have the essence of Outlander, but we want to feel like you can just come to Blood of My Blood kind of blind.” Although, of course, there are many nods to Outlander. So, those of us who already watch the original series have some work to do spotting the Easter eggs.
Regarding the production of Blood of My Blood, Roberts shared that, “We went back to our roots, oddly enough. We went back to Scotland. We went back to how we crafted and set the cameras for the look of the first season.”
While Outlander moved from Scotland to the United States after the first seasons, Blood of My Blood “is a Scottish show. It’s all about Scotland. It’s all that looks and that, that feels. We want you to be inside those castles, and we have a castle look. We actually have a castle look.”
Blood of My Blood is a show characterized by two couples: Brian & Ellen and Julia & Henry. So Roberts and Davis faced the challenge of making their stories completely different, even though they were intertwined. From the first meeting. For Brian and Ellen, they had a guide in Diana Gabaldón’s books, since, like Roberts said, “In the books, they kind of meet spontaneously and they fall in love immediately. So I wanted to have at least the essence of that. And so I also wanted to have the feeling of them hearing each other first rather than seeing each other first.”
To achieve this, “They meet in a barn and there’s a little line in the script that says thunderclap. So we started calling it the thunderclap scene and we knew it had to be so powerful to get them to the bridge. For me, it’s the bridge scene that really brings it all together.” However, with Henry and Julia, everything was different. Roberts used the story of his father and his wife as inspiration for them.
He shared that his “father met his wife through emails. They wrote each other back and forth. And they finally decided they were going to meet each other. They had talked on the phone, but they never saw each other. He asked me to take him to the airport. And I said, You don’t know what she looks like, what are you doing? You’re going out there. And he was like, it doesn’t matter. I already love her. They got married and lived happily until he passed away.” So when it came time to write the story of Henry and Julia, Roberts was clear that “that’s the story I want to tell because I knew it was rooted in reality.“
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Strong Women and Points of No Return
Outlander has always had this feminine perspective. The show has told the story through the prism of an enormously brave and independent woman like Claire. And it hasn’t been afraid to show a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it in every aspect of her life. So, it’s logical to think that Outlander: Blood of My Blood will continue in that vein with Ellen and Julia.
Regarding this, Davis confessed that at first, “It wasn’t something we were hugely conscious of. It was more from a character perspective from Claire that she took agency in her sex life basically. And, that somehow turned into a feminine perspective moment.” As for Blood of My Blood, we will also have “Two female characters who also take some agency in that area. And also maybe a little modern touch in certain areas from the norm.”
However, Roberts prefers the term “strong feminine moment.” Since he and Davis, “come at it from the character perspective of who’s taking the lead in the scene, as opposed to specifically trying to craft these moments that it is a female gaze. Claire and Ellen and Julia are just strong, bad-ass people. And that’s what they are.” But, in general. Roberts and Davis are sure that we will root for all the characters in Blood of My Blood because, as Roberts pointed out “they are powerful people in their own right, both physically, mentally, and emotionally.”
Going fully into what happens in Blood of My Blood, Roberts and Davis shared that episodes 5 and 6 for them are the ones they consider mark a turning point in the story. As Roberts said, both episodes have “a really big epic moment where a lot of turns, so that’s the fulcrum of the season. [Episode 5] is where Brian and Ellen’s relationship takes a turning point between them and with his cousin Murtaugh. And also Murtaugh and Jocasta take a turning point. There are a lot of turning points going on in that episode.” For her part, Davis shared that “[Episode 6] is more about Henry and Julia’s relationship taking a turning point.”
In Blood of My Blood, the relationship between parents and children will be a key for the characters, especially for Brian and Ellen. Furthermore, it will not only affect them, but also the characters around them.
Speaking about Ellen’s relationship with her father, Roberts shared that, to her father, Ellen “is the sun and the moon and the stars in his eyes. But Dougal and Collum present that they have to fight against that. They have to vie for their father’s attention. But they’re men at this time and they’ll never get that same attention. The irony is that Ellen gets that attention but she won’t ever get to be layered because she’s a woman, and she wants that.”
And, as he said, while Ellen’s father has a good heart, Brian’s does not. Lord Lovat “only loves himself. And that’s his problem.” Davis commented that she thinks ”that also makes Brian who he is. He’s been forged in fire. And the biggest touchpoint for him has been his mother, Davina.”
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Family at Work in Blood of My Blood
With everything they’ve put into Blood of My Blood, Roberts and Davis are truly proud of what they’ve accomplished. Roberts shared with us that “when you gather a whole bunch of really talented people together and you let them be talented, you get something a little extraordinary. And we’re really proud that we collectively put it all together.”
However, Davis confesses that at the beginning of the project, she was “nervous because Outlander has sustained us for 10 years, eight seasons. It’s been a success and it’s hard to want to do another show and have it maybe compete with the Mothership. But I am so proud of Matt and the whole team for creating a show that really does stand on its own. And I’m just proud also we can continue to do stuff in Scotland where we have this great crew, this great family we’ve built, this great facility we’ve put together.”
Each season of Outlander has a theme that informs its episodes, and Blood of My Blood is no exception. However, for Roberts and Davis, both shows share a common theme. Roberts said that the roots of this universe lie in “the best love story you can tell.” And we couldn’t agree more.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood will premiere on August 8 os STARZ.
