‘Outlander’ Season 3: Jamie And Claire Reunited In Second Half Of Season, Says Caitriona Balfe
Warning: This article may contain Outlander Season 3 spoilers.
Outlander Season 3 has been in production in Scotland for months, and with awards season around the corner, Critic’s Choice Award nominee Caitriona Balfe (Claire) has embarked on a press tour to spill details about her character and what’s coming up next season — including the fact that the second half of the season will feature more Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire.
Her first stop was with Variety, where she talks about Claire’s strength and resilience.
“For me, Claire is such a survivor,” Balfe explained. “It doesn’t matter where she ends up or what has happened to her, she finds a way to get on with her life and make it something great. That’s what I love about her. In Season 1, where she first goes through the stones and arrives in this dangerous and dirty place, she doesn’t just cower and fall down and get destroyed. She finds her place and she finds a way to make herself useful, and she finds a way to enjoy herself and then to create a life.”
She continued, “And again, when she comes back into the 20th century, even though she’s lost the love of her life (as far as she knows), she doesn’t just disintegrate. She gets herself together, and she becomes a surgeon in a time when there were very few female doctors. So it’s just that strength that she has inside — that no matter what befalls her, she will find a way to [draw on] the best of herself.”
Balfe also addresses the lamentable fact that she has not yet filmed many scenes with Sam Heughan in Outlander Season 3. As the actress alluded to above, at the end of Season 2, Claire returned to her life in the 20th century as Jamie faced the doomed Battle of Culloden. As a result, much of Claire’s upcoming storyline will involve her relationship with her first husband, Frank (Tobias Menzies), and her adult daughter, Brianna (Sophie Skelton).
“We’re almost halfway through [Season 3],” she said. “It’s been great. Obviously Sam and I — our storylines are quite separate for the first few episodes, so I’ve been filming a lot with Tobias and Sophie. And it’s been quite interesting. We’re trying to tell sort of vignettes of a person’s life over the space of 20 years, and it’s been really fun. But I think we’re all ready to get back to the Scottish Claire of it all.”
But Balfe told Entertainment Weekly she’ll be shooting more scenes with Heughan in the second half of Outlander Season 3.
“We’ve shot a little out of order, so Sam and I have shot one episode together. So [this week] Jamie and Claire will be together from now on. So Sam and I will be on set together as we go forward.”
The magazine also asks Balfe if she knows how Outlander Season 3 ends. Of course, she’s coy but does indicate the season’s plots will generally follow the blueprint set out in Voyager, the third book in author Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series.
“No. I mean, we start shooting our next block this week, and I got the script [last week]. It’s not a long time, and I only got one of them, so I’m still waiting on the second one. It can be quite quick, you know? I mean, obviously, we know the general trajectory because we’ve read the book, but what the writers have chosen to do with the book, we don’t know yet until we read the script.”
Finally, Balfe chatted with Gold Derby about her relationship with Heughan.
“We have so much fun,” Balfe said about her co-star. “We get along incredibly well, we’re both quite childish, we have a ridiculous sense of humor. I have so much respect for him, he is one of my closest friends as we’ve gone through this crazy experience together and we’re very similar people in many ways and for some reason it just works.”
What do you think of the latest Outlander Season 3 spoilers?
Outlander Season 3 returns to Starz in 2017.
[Featured Image by Starz]
