While Season 7 Part 2 of the Starz series Outlander is currently airing, the actors have already wrapped shooting the final season and said goodbye to a world they’ve been a part of bringing to life for the past 10 years. The second half of the season has seen Brianna (Sophie Skelton) searching for her kidnapped son in the ‘80s while Roger (Richard Rankin) found himself in 1739. At the same time, Claire (Caitriona Balfe), Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Young Ian (John Bell) returned to Scotland, where long-awaited amends was met with emotional turmoil. Even though there are always enemies threatening to pull their family apart, Outlander continues to highlight how love will endure across centuries and provide hope that the Frasers and MacKenzies will be reunited again.
During this interview with Collider, co-stars Skelton and Rankin talked about how emotional they got about the end of the series and bringing each other to tears, why it’s a grieving process to say goodbye after 10 years, reading the final script together, the importance of family for these characters, seeing different sides over the years, and why Skelton wasn’t able to take her top choice memento home from the set.
Sophie Skelton and Richard Rankin Were Balling When It Came Time To Say Goodbye to ‘Outlander’
Collider: How did it feel, emotionally, to wrap the show? What most surprised you about how it felt to finish something that has been such a huge part of your life?
SOPHIE SKELTON: We were aware that there was gonna be some element of surprise. I don’t think that we were ignoring or hiding from that fact. For me, it was more that it had been quite a long time coming because, even from starting Season 8, we had this attitude of, “Oh, my gosh, this is the first of the last,” with things. With the read-through, I was like, “Oh, this is the last first-ever read-through.” Toward the end, we were used to it on a surface level. There’s just no algorithm for it. To do 10 years on a show is pretty rare. For me, stuff came out that I wasn’t expecting, on the last day. I felt really very excited, standing up on a high, and then, all of a sudden, we saw the cast and crew that we’ve known for 10 years breaking, and it was just a domino effect. Once one person goes, everyone goes. [Richard] was being great, and then [he] saw me and was like, “Oh, you’re crying” And then, we were just balling. It was expectedly unexpected. It was beautiful. It was a nice way to finish it off.
RICHARD RANKIN: A great sense of loss comes to you quite immediately. When it actually happens, you think, “Nah, it’s fine. I’m cool as a cucumber. I’ll be all right.” And then, this really bizarre thing happens, or it did for me anyway, on the last day, when a lot of things come out and you start thinking of various moments during the past eight or nine years, experiences you’ve had on and off camera, and where you started. Here you are on the last day that you’ll properly step into these characters’ shoes and the relationship that you have with your co-stars is going away. However you feel about it, that’s gonna be a part of you that’s no longer there. It’s funny, it’s a really strange thing to come to terms with and is something that I have never really done before because there’s nothing else I’ve been on for that length of time. When you look at it, we’ve been together for 10 years. That’s like being in a relationship, in a lot of ways.
SKELTON: A lot of people have been in and out of our lives. The characters have been through a lot. There have been a lot of new faces and old faces on the show, and the four of us have this throughline. To get rid of a constant family that you’ve had for that long is quite sad. It’s a grieving process. But I do feel lucky, especially since Brianna’s in a really good place. She’s been through so much and she’s survived so much. However the season ends, at least I know that in her soul and in her gut, she’s the woman that she wanted to be. That’s a very peaceful place to leave a character. It’s sad to not be stepping into her shoes again, but I feel like I can let her go in that sense.
RANKIN: She’s in a better place.
SKELTON: Yeah.
What was the first experience you had with the final script? Did you read it by yourself first, to experience those emotions? Was it a table read with the cast?
SKELTON: They actually sent it for us to read first, but I really wanted to save it for the read-through because I wanted that experience. I wanted it to be like, “Woah!”
RANKIN: I read it for the first time at the read-through, as well. I tend to do that anyway. I actually prefer leaving it to read with everyone. That is actually true.
You’ve talked about how rare it is, as actors, to tell a story for this many seasons. What did you most enjoy about that journey and the challenges of playing characters over these time periods and over such a long timespan?
SKELTON: We’ve been very lucky that there’s never been any monotony on the show. There’s never be
en a dull moment on the show. Richard and I have played these characters for a long span of their age. With flashbacks, I’ve played Brianna from age 16 to 30-odd, and we span different time periods. We’ve gone through the 40s, the 60s, and the 80s. I feel that we have been very lucky in our Outlander experience. Each season has been completely different and our characters have developed so much that they are completely different people to when we started. It’s felt like a really cool ride.
Keeping Their Family Together Is a Priority for ‘Outlander’s Brianna and Roger
Family has been such an important theme, and I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than not knowing where your son is. On top of that, these two are separated and trying to figure out how to find him. How are they each dealing with finding their son and getting him back, not knowing what the other is doing? I can’t imagine what that would be like in real life.
RANKIN: Their parental skills just take over for each of them. They just go into an automatic mode of, “It doesn’t matter what we have to do or how we have to get there, we’ll find our son and we’ll do whatever it takes to do that.” We see them really have very driven modes, each in themselves, that turn in such a powerful way. They just go into drive to find their son, with everything that comes with that.
SKELTON: Yeah, it’s fight or flight, and they whip into action pretty quickly. I think it’s nice to show how much the relationship has progressed through this little spot of trauma, as well, because I think old Roger and Bree might have left this tear them apart, probably bickering and arguing or whatever. There’s so much unspoken planning in that scene where we decide what to do. It’s really sweet. They’re just like, “Okay, this is what we’re doing. We agree with each other. It doesn’t have to be a long convo. Let’s just go get our son.” They trust that they’ll achieve their mission. They’re always together even when they’re apart. It’s a really great way to show their worth as a couple.
Richard, what did you most enjoy about Roger’s journey, traveling around in the 1700s and coming across characters that he knew, but who didn’t know him, being under different circumstances. What was it like to have that experience?
RANKIN: You’re seeing Roger in a different light, first and foremost. You get to see a very different side of the character, which you haven’t necessarily seen before. You usually see him in the context of his family, with Bree and with the Frasers. You’ve gotten to know a part of him, but people behave differently with other people in other circumstances. We see a different dimension of him, which was fun. There’s so much going on in the second half of Season 7. That’s just one area where we’re bringing in a few more layers of the story, which I think are really interesting. We get some recalls to historical Outlander and what that brings to the story, and some new relationships, but with an interesting context. There’s so much going on that people will enjoy.
It was really fun to watch your reactions with some of the characters because you’re reacting to what you know of them, but they don’t know you.
RANKIN: It’s just ridiculous. Roger thinks the circumstances he finds himself in are utterly ridiculous. He’s like, “What are the chances of me being here now? Why the hell am I here? What the fuck is going on?” It’s immediately inherently comical because people know these characters that he’s interacting with. They know their situation and where they’ve come from. They can plug into that because they have an idea. The audience is already with you because they know the characters already. It’s like imagining, if you met this character, what would they be like? You’re getting a taste of that.
Sadly, Sophie Skelton Didn’t Get To Drive the Mustang Home From the ‘Outlander’ Set
Did you have a top choice prop or memento that you wanted to take home, and did you actually get to have it?
SKELTON: I wanted to steal the Mustang, but I didn’t know how to drive that off the lot discreetly. “There she goes! We can hear her.” They’re quite hard cars to drive. I did think about Ellen’s pearls because they’re such a throughline of the story. Brianna has never really had a huge, constant member of her family, and those pearls have been there throughout. They’re like her little protectors. That would be cool.