What It's Like to Visit the "Outlander" Set as a Superfan
Sam Heughan, Caitriona Balfe, Sophie Skelton, and Richard Rankin told us what's next for their characters.
Get more details on season 5, and see what else the cast has to say.
When a colleague first recommended watching Outlander, the Starz drama based on Diana Gabaldon's book series, I said: "That doesn't sound like my thing, but I guess I'll give it a try." Two weeks and 28 episodes later, I wept over my grilled cheese sandwich as I watched the end of "Dragonfly in Amber" on my phone during my lunch break. Such is the pull of the story and characters that Gabaldon created, a world that the cast of Outlander and the show's tireless crew have brought to life since 2014. Initially drawn to Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire's (Caitriona Balfe) steamy love story, I stayed for the stunning costumes, fascinating history lessons, and adventures full of twists and turns
So when Starz invited me to visit the Outlander set to learn some exclusive secrets behind season 5 and how it all gets made, it was a dream come true. Merry of soul, I sailed on a day...well, I actually took a seven-hour flight to Scotland. Before I knew it, I was spending the next morning exploring the show's enormous studio in the town of Cumbernauld. I got to watch scenes filmed featuring Heughan, Balfe, plus Sophie Skelton and Lauren Lyle—and I took a field trip to the rustic cabin that Jamie built in season 4. (Of course, I made sure to get photo proof.)
There's only so much magic I'm actually allowed to reveal, but here's everything I can share from my super-secret Outlander season 5 set visit.
Outlander's sets and props are jaw-dropping—and the food is real.
My day kicked off with a tour from Jon Gary Steele, Outlander's production designer. Steele led me down a series of winding hallways, each decorated with framed production shots from each season, into the show's mind-blowing main prop warehouse. It was like a hyper-organized museum of nearly every object you've ever seen over the course of the series: The stove from Frank and Claire's place in Boston! Bree's papasan chair! Clan tartans hanging above protest signs from the 1960s! A bull puppet! Swords, and barrels, and knives—oh my! Many of the props are crafted by Steele's team themselves, such as the Native American's fiberglass canoes from season 4. (Though I took note that most of the Mohawk props are in storage now, as the tribes won't play a big role in season 5).
"A lot of set materials get re-used from season to season," Steele told me as we walked through another space full of carpenters at work. "The French set's walls came from the Boston apartment, and the cabin's windows are from Lallybroch." They then showed me an as-yet unburned, important season 5 prop: the titular fiery cross of the book this season is mostly based on. "Sam Heughan's uncle actually made these," Steele said.
Walking onto the interior set for River Run—the plantation where Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy) lives—I was taken with how thoughtful every detail is, down to the doorknobs. I told Steele as much as I admired the dark blue flowered pattern on Jocasta's chairs. Steele admitted he and his team pay next-level attention to detail.
"We're picky b*****s," Steele said, laughing. Case in point: Before any fabric covers a piece of furniture, they test it by candlelight to see if it will "read" onscreen—otherwise, it must be dyed or switched out. Most of the food is real, too, including the feast that accompanies a wedding that will occur this season.
My eyes tried to soak up every detail inside of the interior of the Big House, where Jamie and Claire live in season 5, and then the cabin. Each of the spaces truly felt less like a set, more like an actual home.
"It looks like it belongs in Architectural Digest. It’s amazing," Maril Davis, an executive producer on the show, said of the Big House interior. "I think it really helps the actors when they walk onto a set that’s lifelike, as opposed to walking on a set that maybe has two or three walls. Our sets are almost pretty much complete."
"When you're putting on an authentic costume and you're walking in an authentic set, I think it just helps everyone transform into this era," Maril added. "Our show always goes the extra step like that."
The Craigh na Dun standing stones are made of foam.
The "stones" live in the warehouse-like space of the studio, too, until they're needed on location. There, Steele and his team dress them with greenery to make it look like they're actually coming out of the ground.
Obviously, I needed to put my hands on the stones anyway—and luckily, this is one of the (very few) photos I was permitted to take. Nothing magical happened, but that's totally fine: I love voting, indoor plumbing, and wearing pants too much to fall through the stones and find my Jamie.
Adso the cat was on set! Well, one of the Adsos.
The animal handler introduced me to the blue-gray bundle in his arms, one of the British Shorthairs that portray Fraser Ridge's adorable new mouser cat. And he was pure soft, fluffy goodness.
"There’s a lot of grey cats running around," Sophie Skelton told me. "There’s about four Adsos. We're gonna have so many pets by the end of it, children and pets." I did get to feel an unnamed cast member's squishy fake baby bump (she offered!), so Skelton is onto something there.
I watched a major book scene being filmed.
I cover TV and movies as part of my job, and I live in New York city, so encountering celebrities is an oddly normal part of workdays and weekend coffee shop runs. But I have to be honest: Nothing prepared me for turning a corner to find Sam Heughan getting a makeup touch-up while dressed as Jamie Fraser. The rational part of my brain said, "Oh yes, there's the actor I'll talk to later today." But the Outlander fan in me internally screamed: JAMIE!! JAMIE, THAT IS JAMIE!!!!
A few yards away from Claire's surgery room in the Big House set, I took my seat behind the monitors and put headphones on. I could hear a mic'd up Heughan, Balfe, and Skelton exchanging banter between takes; Heughan sneaked a quick in-costume selfie as a crew member misted him with fake sweat.
Episode director Annie Griffin looked somber as she surveyed the scene and made small adjustments. Then, as the room's bustle halted, "action!" was called. The chatter halted, and they snapped back into character with a speed that made me have to stifle a surprised laugh. Readers of The Fiery Cross should definitely look forward to seeing this life-or-death story line play out onscreen. And for now, that's all I'm permitted to say.
Diana Gabaldon is "no shy violet" about what she doesn't like on the show.
While Gabaldon doesn't make the trip to the Scotland set herself, she's still involved—to a point. She sees all of the scripts and raw footage from a day of production, weighing in with thoughts and notes.
"The amazing thing about Diana is a lot of authors would be protective of their books," Davis said. "Obviously, there's certain things she likes done a certain way, and she’s no shy violet. She’s not shy about telling us if there's something she doesn’t like."
Typically, however, Gabaldon's reactions are very positive and supportive, and season 5 is no exception. "She’s been very pleased with what we've done," Davis continued. "I think she knows she has the books, and the books will always be hers. She acknowledges that the TV show is a different thing, and sometimes we are going to go in a slightly different direction or change things around." In trying to fit hundreds of pages into twelve episodes, Davis points out that "there’s only so much we can do, because her books are so large and we can’t possibly do all the incredible details she has in there."
The cast and crew really do adore each other.
It's not just for the 'gram—it's a genuine pleasure to watch the massive, busy team make each other laugh when the cameras aren't rolling.
"I think we just got really lucky," said Skelton, who joined the show in season 2. "It’s quite rare that you work on something where there aren’t any egos, and everybody is so down to earth and so lovely and so welcoming that we do all genuinely get on that well. There’s a lot of banter on set."
The makeup and hair designer came from Game of Thrones.
Like Steele's production setup, Game of Thrones veteran Anne McEwan's hair and makeup trailer is behind much of Outlander. "I had a tiny room about half the size of this van when I started," McEwan told me. She's got the transformations down to a science at this point, out of necessity: Each main cast member's hair and makeup needs to be done in an hour to stay on production schedule.
A rare exception is applying Jamie's back scars. "If Sam has his back on, that’s two hours, which means they've lost an hour of shooting time," McEwan explained. And then there's the wigs: Balfe's Claire and Heughan's Jamie each have four wigs, Richard Rankin's Roger has two, and Skelton's Bree has three. "I definitely like Sam's wig from this season best," she said. "Outlander is a great job to do because there's never a bored moment."
Roger and Bree move into the cabin in season 5.
The day wrapped up with a ride out to a location we know and love from season 4: the cabin that Jamie first built on Fraser's Ridge. Located on a private property, the inside of the cabin holds none of the detail the studio's cozy interior set does, like Jemmy's little trundle bed and Bree's drawings. But the dangling gourds and everything else outside make it feel like the Frasers just left the scene minutes ago. I may not have time-traveled during my day on the Outlander set, but I definitely felt transported.
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