Outlander actor Sam Heughan revealed in his memoir that he regretted filming a sex scene in Season 1.
Sam Heughan’s career took off thanks to the historical-fantasy series Outlander, in which he has been lending his features to Jamie Fraser since 2014. Eight years later, while she is still much appreciated by fans, the actor decides to publish his memoirs, entitled Waypoints: My Scottish Journey. In particular, there is a scene that particularly marked her.
We are at the end of season 1, in episode 16. Jamie remembers his meeting Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), his capture, and all the sexual abuse he subjected her to. Very raw scenes during which Sam Heughan is completely naked. What he regrets today:
“I didn’t feel the nudity was necessary in relation to the horror of the situation Jamie was in, in terms of punishment and humiliation. I felt betrayed by the creative team. I tried to reason with them and it started a hell of a debate.”
A compromise would then have been found between them. The actor would have agreed to a full frontal scene, but only after his character was repeatedly raped. It was only in post-production that it was decided not to put it in the editing.
In a podcast he participated in a few months ago, Sam Heughan revealed that he had specifically asked the production to call on an intimacy coordinator to help them shoot the sex scenes safely. It must be said that Outlander (both the books and the series) contains a fairly large number of them. So much so that he and Caitriona Balfe signed a contract obliging them to agree to shoot nudity scenes.