‘Outlander’: Caitriona Balfe on Sex, Violence and Time Travel
And then there’s the aftermath.
The book had a very different timeline than where we started Season Two, where it had been a long time after Jamie and Claire had left Scotland and they were having lots of sex again. Everyone on the show was like, No, we can’t do that. We need to allow him time to heal from this. It’s impossible for him to be intimate, because Black Jack has poisoned that sanctuary for him. I thought Sam did such a beautiful job portraying that PTSD.
Rape is not an exclusively female problem. This is something that happens to men and women, boys and girls, and it’s horrific. It’s a dangerous thing when you incorporate rape into any kind of entertainment, because you don’t want to sensationalize it in any way or form. But sometimes by showing stuff like that, what you can do is provide a forum for a conversation about it and maybe help some people understand it a little better. I think everyone on our show tried to deal with it with the sensitivity that it deserved — it wasn’t entered into lightly at all.
Another “hot button” issue that shows up in Outlander is that of abortion — but unlike every other TV show, it hasn’t been used as a primary plot point or been at the center of drama. It’s merely integrated into the show as a fact of life. Was that approach purposeful?
Claire was a nurse in the 1940s during war time — that’s something she probably came across multiple times. I do think women throughout the ages have always dealt with the problem of unwanted pregnancies, whether or not they were “allowed” to do anything about it. One of the great emancipations of women was having control over our own reproductive rights, be it with birth control or abortion. We saw it being talked about in Season One, where the character Geillis (played by Lotte Verbeek) talked about a certain herb or berry that can bring on “your flux,” and then again in this season where Louise asks Claire for help. We should look at abortion in a non-hysterical, non-religious way because it’s often a practical solution.
The time-traveling aspect of the series is almost an afterthought until the second season, when Claire and Jamie charge head first into trying to change the future and save the Scots. Neither seems particularly concerned about the butterfly effect of altering history — until Claire realizes that if Jamie kills Black Jack before a certain date, her future husband Frank will never be born …
Owww, my brain hurts! [Laughs] That’s the beauty of fiction. Diana created this world where these time travel rules apply only in this dimension and therefore don’t have to be logical. In Season One, Claire is thrust into this new world and everything happens so fast and so furiously that she doesn’t really have time to absorb any of the events. She’s kind of this reactionary character, so it’s only at the end when their whole existence is in peril that she then goes “Wait a minute — maybe we can change time!” The girl has gone in blind, what can I say? We’ve got to cut her some slack!