Jessica Reynolds on the Tragedy of Malva Christie
When I first meet Jessica Reynolds, she is beaming with nervous energy. We’re at the Royal Festival Hall in London for the premiere of Outlander’s sixth season, and she’s clearly excited to be there, just taking in the whole spectacle of the highly choreographed event. “This is my first red carpet. It’s wild,” she says. “It's easy to be overwhelmed and kind of feel unworthy in these situations when you're new to it all, but I'm just trying to enjoy it. I just get giggly. How lucky am I?”
Standing in front of me in a sleek black gown paired with architectural heels and a bold red lip, Reynolds and her exuberance are completely at odds with the tragedy that befalls her character on the show.
She plays Malva Christie this season, a newcomer to Fraser’s Ridge, whose story quickly becomes entwined with that of the Frasers. “She comes into the Ridge. She's heard from her dad that Jamie is this powerful person, and I think she's so excited to meet him,” Reynolds says. (Malva’s father, an abusive, intensely religious man named Tom Christie, knew Jamie from their time in Ardsmuir Prison after the failed Jacobite rebellion.) “Then she sees Claire, and she's just enraptured. She's never seen a woman like this in her life. She lost her mom when she was very young, and she thinks, ‘What can I do to be anything close to that?’ It starts off really sweetly and innocently and then family life takes over, and it all kind of unravels in the way that I don't think Malva wanted it to. It's not the prettiest ending.”
The ending Reynolds is alluding to plays out in this week’s episode, when, after revealing that she is pregnant, Malva falsely accuses Jamie of being the father of her unborn child. That confrontation was actually Reynolds’s audition scene for the role.
“That scene was one of the first ones I learned, and with so much going on in Malva's head, I'm glad I had that from the start because I was able to sit with it for so long,” she later tells me over the Zoom. “I had time to let that scene grow, and breathe, and we spent a lot of time on it. We spent a full day filming take, after take, after take, after take, but I think that's exactly what it needed, because it's such a dynamic scene.”
Jamie denies having slept with her, but the damage to his and to Claire’s reputation is done—and the bond between the Frasers and Malva is severed, until just a few weeks later, when Claire finds Malva murdered in the garden.
“It's like the peak of the tragedy, and it's so visceral. Caitriona [Balfe, who plays Claire] has such a great performance in that scene. She's crying, and it was like, whoa, she's pregnant right now [in real life], and I am playing dead right now, and it's really sad. I wish Malva didn't go this way,” Reynolds says, describing the closing of this week’s episode. “And it was one of those moments where you feel the gravity of what was happening. It was so interesting to see her play this above me. I really felt in it, because I was able to just observe. Because I was dead, I didn't have to say anything. It was kind of a strange experience, and quite sad.”
Because so many Outlander viewers have already read the book series by Diana Gabaldon that inspires the show, they came in with a clear sense of Malva’s story, and opinions on Reynolds and her performance. Even before her casting was announced, she was “warned” about the potential reaction from the fans.
“When I was announced, it was one of the craziest days ever for me, because I saw the whole weight of the fandom that day. It was so positive and so lovely, but I was just like, whoa, this is the scale of this thing,” she remembers. “People have been really kind and a lot of fans have pointed out, we're not hitting on you, we're hitting on your character.”
Fortunately, Balfe, who has spent years navigating both life in the public eye and the intense nature of the Outlander community, has become something of a mentor for Reynolds. “She just put me at ease straight away, and looked after me,” Reynolds says, sharing that both she and Balfe are from Ireland and often talked about home on set. “Working with her, it was amazing.”
The admiration is mutual. “I love, love working with Jessica. She's straight out of theater school and she's just wonderful. And the relationship that Claire and Malva has is so special, because we see this very kind of intense young woman, and I think at first Claire is a little bemused by her, but she sees within her a real thirst for learning and a thirst for exploring the world beyond the very strict boundaries of her father and brother,” Balfe says of her co-star.
“Claire really is captivated by this young woman who I think reminds Claire of herself at a young age. So she takes her under her wing, and the relationship builds from there. And of course, it becomes more complicated as we go on. It's a sad storyline, but Jessica's wonderful.”
While there’s debate among fans whether Malva Christie is a sympathetic victim suffering from domestic abuse or a sociopathic villain, Reynolds is clear in how she views her character.
“First and foremost, she's a victim,” Reynolds says, sharing that she sees the books as an “absolute Bible” for playing the character. “It has Diana's commentary of what Malva's doing and why she's doing it,” she continues, explaining how she matched up scenes from the book and the show’s script to inform her performance.
“The show really delves deep into the psychology of why she's done these things. And if evil is beat into someone at such a young age, and they've been convinced to believe that they are inherently bad and evil, there's a likelihood that they are going to lash out and some awful things might happen.”
The complicated nature of Malva’s arc was exactly the reason Reynolds was interested in the role to begin with. “I gravitate toward a quite dark and juicy story line. So it was like an actor's dream to have that kind of palette, to have that complexity and such drama going on,” she says.
And despite the fact that Malva is dead, her story on Outlander isn't finished. Tonight’s episode “might not be the last” time viewers see the character, Reynolds hints. Of course, there’s still the mystery of who the baby’s father is—and who killed her. “There could be some flashbacks, maybe some stuff we filmed,” she says. After all, Outlander does love a ghost moment.
You Might Also Like